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INTERNATIONAL

Printed in London, Manchester, Frankfurt and Roubaix

newspaper of the year

46.468

End of the peer show

New Labour Establishment: Day 2

Anger

over

schools

failure

Shephard ‘panic’ over tests at 1 1

"1m

% N<c,

Education

Portrait

£ ■

John Carvel Education EdRor

GILLIAN She- phard was last night accused of panicking in the face of fresh evidence from the Office for Standards in Education that nearly half the schools in England are foiling their pupils through a mix of inadequate teaching, low ex- pectations and lack of books.

After Chris Woodheari, the chief inspector, identified a “worrytngly persistent" slow- ing of pupils' performance in the middle years at primary school, Mrs Shephard prom- ised to publish national tables of school performance in tests at 11 to give parents more in- formation about how well pri- mary schools were doing.

“We have to make sure that they are being made frilly ac- countable and that the results are transparent for all to see, the Education and Employ- ment Secretary said.

Two weeks ago results of the first national tests of 11- year-olds showed more than half foiled to reach the ex- pected standard in English

and maths. At that stage Mrs Shephard said it would be inappropriate to publish school performance tables until the new system of -as- sessment "bedded down".

Her change of heart was scorned by David Blunkett, shadow education secretary. "This is a woman who is under enormous pressure from all sides. She is prepared to concede anything if the pressure is sufficient"

David Hart, general secre- tary of the National Associa- tion of Head Teachers, said it could not remotely be argued that the tests for 11-year-olds would have bedded down by the summer when the first performance tables will be compiled. "They wiD not pres- ent a frill and fair picture for parents choosing schools."

Mr Woodhead’s report — based on about 4.000 school Inspections — said standards needed to be raised in about half the primary schools and

two-fifths of secondaries.

Children tended to do well in their earlier primary years, but their progress

1996 Ofsted report reveals: tone in three V lessons far B to 11 year olds unsatisfactory.

0 One si five lessons for 1 1 to 14 year Okie unsatisfactory.

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slowed after the age of seven, due to a foil in the quality of teaching. This persisted in the early years of secondary school when pupils were taught by the least-qualified teachers,

. Mr Woodhead criticised consistently weak teaching” by a minority of teachers whose performance “damages the education of many chil- dren" and who should be helped to leave the profession. Particularly urgent action was required to improve liter- acy and numeracy.

But in spite of the bleak findings, Mr Woodhead’s di- agnosis was more balanced than his first report a year ago. He published the names of 203 excellent schools and even had a good word to say for judicious use of “trendy" teaching techniques as long as they were part of a care- fully-tailored package includ- ing the traditional whole- class approach. Although nearly 40 per cent of schools could make better use of their resources, shortage of books and cramped accommodation were serious enough to merit closer scrutiny, be said.

Mrs Shephard's promise to publish tables afli -year-olds’ performance upset teaching unions. “Parents have a right to information about the qual- ity of education their children receive — snapshot inspec- tions and crude league tables do not provide this." said Doug McAvoy, general secre- tory of tiie National Union of Teachers.

“They are an expensive, bureaucratic exercise which mostly confirm the obvious but are of little practical value to parents," said Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of tiie National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers.

Leader comment, page 8, Utters, page B

• ™»ry Clinton In assertive socialising mode at the annual National Governors’ Association ball at • PHOTOGRAPH: STCW©J JAFFE

Soldier’s hand of friendship eases Bosnian child’s painful burden

Julian Bortjer in Sarajevo reports on a British sergeant's personal mercy mission

_ _ Sergeant-Major Vic Ferguson strolled _ _ into -the hospital ward, Hurmija Mojic was sit- ting np in bed looking straight ahead, her face dead- ened with a numbing combi- nation of grief, loss and boredom.

Since that November day, the 12-year-old, half-paralysed

Muslim girl, and the sharp, cheerful soldier from Leeds have forged one of the more unusual bonds of the Bosnian conflict Sgt-Major Ferguson has dedicated himself to help- ing Hurmija live again, and Is recruiting the help of any Nato soldier who will listen.

Hurmija avoided the long drawn-out atrocity at

Srebrenica — but she has good reason to envy the dead. Since a small piece of shrap- nel from a Serb shell plunged into her spine In October 1994, she has been paralysed from the waist down.

Unable to control bar blad- der, she sat in fetid bedclothes in Sarajevo’s underfunded hospital for more than a year, missing her father and her two brothers wham she left behind in Srebrenica. They are almost certainly lying in mass graves, victims of the massacres which followed the Serb conquest of the former government enclave last July.

“She had a completely life- less expression,” recalls Sgt- Major Ferguson, aged 32, whose wife and three chil- dren are at his base in Ger- many. “Hurmija spoke in monosyllables and never once looked at zee when I tried to talk to her. Her sheets stank. That night I cried myself to sleep."

While most British squad- dies in the Nato-led peace- keeping force (I-FOR) spend their off-duty hours In the bar or watching videos — trying to create the illusion of being

at borne — Sgt-Major Fergu- son is out in his f^nH Rover almost every night, negotiat- ing his way through Saraje- vo's bomb-cratered, unlit roads to take packages of food to Hunnqa’s family.

The two of them sit together in the Mujics* tiny flat with all the easy familiarity of fother and daughter. When strangers call, she lapses into virtual silence but reaches out to bold the sergeant- major’s hand for reassurance. He sips thick Bosnian coffee and teases her mercilessly through his translator, it .is the only thing that will bring a smile to her face.

Hurmija ’s mother, Ajkuna, and her two sisters. Mersija and Ramjja, have to share their flat with another refu- gee family. They spend most of their lives in a room 8ft wide and 15ft long.

Ajkuna would like to be able to find aground-floor flat near the hospital, but she said: “My husband and my sons are still counted as miss- tom to page 2, column 3

Fund* thmtaMwd, p»g« 7; Leader comment, page 8

Cold weather set to last as snow blankets most of Britain

Alex Bellos

HEAVY overnight snow- falls across Britain were the first front of a wintry snap forecast to last until the end of the week.

- Bhzzards caused havoc in Scotland and Wales yester- day, closing mountain passes and making driving treacher- ous. A postman died In Dyfed when his van crashed into a jeep in deep snow.

The London Weather Cen- tre said the bitterly cold weather was moving slowly eastwards and would cover the country by this morning. A spokesman said every- where would see at least a few indies of snow, except for Kent and East Anglia.

The Scottish borders was worst hit by yesterday's snowfalls, receiving at least 12 Inches. Large sections of the A74, the main road from England to Glasgow, were

closed. Most motorways in Strathclyde were down to one lane.

Thousands of school- children in Scotland, Wales and the Lake District were sent home because their .schools were shut, and hun- dreds of workers at the Sella- field nuclear complex in Cum- bria had to spend last night at work because they were snowed fn.

Temperatures will be around freezing point around

most of the country, accord- ing to the London Weather Centre, but strong southeast- erly winds will make It feel colder.

The National Grid does not expect to have any problem maintaining supply during the snowy period, a spokes- man said. There were fears during the cold spell last month that power might be cut off to some parts of the country because of high de- mands for electricity.

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Child bride in Turkey ‘six weeks pregnant’

Sarah Bosofey, and Chris Hutton fat Ankara

SARAH COOK, the 13- year-old Essex school- girl who went through an Islamic marriage ceremony to Tur- key. was reported by Turkish television last night to be six weeks’ pregnant ATV, considered to be the most reliable private televi- sion channel in the region, said Sarah had been exam- toed yesterday at the state hospital in Kahranman- maras, the town in south-east Turkey where she has lived with her husband's family since the ceremony a mouth ago.

She attended the hospital for an examination which was supposed to establish whether her physical develop- ment matched the age sug- gested in her British passport

Her husband. Musa Komeagac, aged 18. is being held in jail by the Turkish au- thorities on charges relating to under-age sex.

The television report an- nounced that, during the ex- amination, Sarah was found to be pregnant. A second tele- vision station, Kanal D, has also broadcast the story.

Sarah had been expected to fly back to London yesterday with her mother. Jackie Cook, who has spent more than a week in Turkey trying to persuade her to return.

British embassy officials thought she had succeeded, but Sarah apparently changed her mind once again during an emotional two-hour visit to Musa in jail yesterday.

Reports that she was on her way to Istanbul proved to be premature. Last night Sarah was still in Kahranman- maras. where local people have hailed her a heroine for her conversion to Islam and loyalty to her Turkish hus-

band in the foce of pressure from the British authorities. Sarah was made a ward of courtin London after an ap- plication by Essex social ser- vices. and ordered back to Britain,

A spokesman at the British embassy in Ankara said Inst night that he had no comment to make on the reports of her pregnancy. He confirmed that earlier, both Sarah and her mother had expressed a wish to return to Britain.

"We still have our consul and honorary consul in the region," he said. “They are trying to help them leave but It is taking some time."

Consular officials are tread- ing carefully because of fears of an angry response by local people, who felt Sarah and Musa should not be forcibly separated. Musa is due to ap- pear in court again on Febru- ary 15.

If Sarah is pregnant, the legal and diplomatic compli- cations of the case will multi- ply as negotiations begin over where — and with whom — the child is to be brought up.

Sarah, who is the youngest of four children, met Musa, a waiter at a hotel, when she was on a family holiday in the Turkish resort of Alanya last June. He proposed to her after a short courtship.

After the family had returned home to Braintree, Sarah pestered her parents to return to Turkey .

She flew back in October wearing the engagement ring, and married Musa in January in a Muslim ceremony attended by both sets of parents.

She is so popular in Kah- ranmanmaras that the mayor. All Sezal, crowned her "bride of the city*’ and her husband "groom of the nation".

Sarah's father Adrian Cook, aged 42, stayed in Essex while his wife flew back out to be with Sarah.

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2 NEWS

Sketch

The Guardian Tuesday February 6 1996

In the dark, and possibly mad

Simon Hoggart

TO WORK for the first time on a spanking new privatised train. Actu- ally it looked remarkably Uke an old British RaD train, in the same colours, with the same staff and the same surly youths with their boots up on the seats. It was even 12 min- utes late. These days nostalgia is just another source of instant gratification.

Still, I was lucky. On the same line the previous day I would have travelled in with the Transport Secretary, Sir George Young, and Mr Toby Jesse! who. failing a rout will shortly be my MP.

The two men bad risen at 4.30am to ride on the first pri- vatised train. “You must be mad." someone shouted at Mr Jessel in the Commons yester- day. “Perhaps l am mad,” he agreed, and a few of his col- leagues could be seen nodding, almost imperceptibly. “The train was clean and punctual so my constituents can now look forward to an improved service!” <Of course, with VIPs on board, they’d bothered to clean it and make it on time.)

“It was a particular plea- sure to meet my hon friend at 5 o'clock on Twickenham station,” Sir George replied, straining credulity further than most would dare. “He was able to point out certain interesting fra hires on our way to Waterloo.”

You can't see a lot at 5.15 on a February morning, since it is pitch dark. Perhaps Mr Jes- sell pointed to where local landmarks would be visible two hours later. “That's Odd- bins, Secretary of State, there's Look-In Video Rental and, ah yes, Mr Frisby the Butcher. His loin chops are rather famous around here!” “Fascinating, Toby, quite fascinating," Sir George would murmur in his courte- ous way, wondering vaguely if there was a restaurant car he could escape to. He was an- swering a question about the

First night

Cruelly, madly, deeply disturbing

Robin Thomber

The Wasp Factory

Bamw-in-FumessAourinq

ONE WAY to adapt a novel for the stage, as Ken Campbell once said, is to get your secretary to type out all the bits in quota- tion marks. The other way is to deconstruct the ideas in the book and reinterpret them. That's what director Rich- ard Gregory has done with Iain Banks's first, cult novel a tongue-in-cheek exercise in the comedy of cruelty which examines just how nasty you can get and still come out smiling.

Banks’s book Is apparently about a disturbed 16-year-old — a solitary, obsessive fetish- ist with a macabre, sadistic sense or humour, the sort of person who takes butterflies apart to see how they work and kills children for fun by flying them on a kite.

He’d probably now be diag- nosed as autistic or psychotic — but it's Frank's brother, Eric, who's a certified nutter and his loopy, hippy father who seems relatively sane. It's a Catcher In The Rye for the me generation.

Gregory's 75-minute straight-through production, for a Northern Stage tour of the north, was defiantly pre- miered this weekend at Forum 28 in Barrow-in-Fur- ness, where it is followed by a more predictable amateur

cular sandpit suggesting the book’s rolling dunes, and a vertical ladder suggesting all sorts of weird theosophies. Richard Clewes, as the Esther, is shaven-headed and sinis- terty robed like a medieval cleric. Jane Amfleld splits Flunk's personality with Mat- thew Dunster, who also plays Erie, in black casuals.

It's not a conventional nat- uralistic replay of the book.

. Gregory uses the text like mu- sical themes and his perform- ers like instruments. He uses puppets and music, movement and light.

The dance sequences, with the tortured, jerky, self-muti- lating movements of the deeply troubled, spill into the gestures and body language of the spoken text: the arrogant anguish of the ladder work spills into the breathtaking - gymnastics of the circus.

You're left with a sense of alienation and dissociation so complete that it literally takes your breath away — here is Philip Larkin's “They fUck you up, your mum and dad” !

made flesh. You're not even I sure, because of the cast- j Ing, whether Frank and Eric | are two people or one. j

What is certain is that casual killing, on a caprice, is not just revenge for parental detachment but an almost valid response to being bom into an absurd world, a frivo- lous feult in a venal universe. The Wasp Factory rattles your foundations as It challenges

your preconceptions of an eve-

Survey shows two in three MPs support BBC battle over sport

Patrick Wlntour

TWO out of three MPs back regulations to prevent Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB Cram gaining exclusive access to flagship sporting events, a survey revealed yesterday.

The survey, commissioned by the BBC from MORI was released on the eve of today’s House of Lords vote on amendments tabled by a cross-party alliance of peers which would guarantee the BBC and ITV access to Brit- ain’s sporting "crown jewels".

The Government, which

favours allowing sporting bodies to determine the mar- ket rate for their events, faces defeat over the issue.

poll shows 69 per cent or MPs support regulation erf mAJor sports events with 23 per cent opposed. Conserva- tive MPS back regulation by 48 per cent to 37 per cent Senior Tories including Kenneth Baker, the former home secretary, Robert At- kins, the former sports minis- ter, David Melior, the former heritage secretary, and Sebas- tian Coe, the athlete and MP for Falmouth, have expressed their concern at the Broad- casting Bill.

Publishers fight curb on ‘explicit Scott sex’ in teenagers’ magazines hack at

critics

fiddles on the privatised TLS Une Labour MPs seemed out- raged. although I don't see why they should be surprised. A certain gamy whiff of sleaze is helpful for getting prefer- ment from this government

Perhaps it was in their bid, couched in modern corporate jargon: “We propose to con- struct an aggressive ongoing reciprocal program of cre- ative unilateral revenue en- hancement . . ."

Nigel Spearing said he bad asked the new company to stop trains at West Ham, on the laughable grounds that passengers could change to two Tube lines and another railway. “They refused, claiming they would lose reve- nue from there to Fenchurch Street," he said.

Not stopping trains because passengers would only get off! Perhaps the company run- ning the East Coast line will enhance their revenue by cut- ting out York so that everyone has to goto Edinburgh.

National Heritage Ques- tions were Largely devoted to Mrs Bottomley telling us In her fluting voice whata huge success the lottery had been. She was constantly inter- rupted by Labour scruffe.

"Speak from the heart, Ginny!" they bawled, or “Where's her off-button, eh?” as she piped onward. “Yes,” she would say, often, “the opposite side say one th ing . . ."and they all joined in: "... and do another!"

Years ago upper class ladies ventured into the slums to warn the poor about the evils of gambling. Nowadays Mrs Bottomley tells them of the in- numerable benefits of gam- bling, but the jeering from the urchins and guttersnipes is just as loud. She bore up well except when she raved about j “urban forests" (what?) and once when she completely for- got to answer a question.

Later. Edwina Currie received toe first anti-plug for her new novel Tony Banks complained on a point of order that the book implied MPs spent their time “drinking themselves to oblivion and bonking their eyeballs out Unfortunately this is j

not the case.”

Betty slapped him firmly j

down. "There is an answer to j that Don’t buy it and don’t read it" There's a quote which would look well on the cover of the paperback.

Sally Weale

Publishers in the lucrative girls’ maga- zine market are resisting attempts to clamp down on explicit sex in publications read by young teenagers.

A Bill is to be introduced hi the House of Commons today In response to claims of grow- ing concern among parents that magazines read by chil- dren as young as 10 and ll contain too much sex.

The furore was j triggered last November by the prob- lem page of the magazine TV Hits which explained to read- ers — some as young as Ji, though the average age Is 14 — how to perform oral sex.

The Periodical (Protection of Children) Bill sponsored by Tory MP Peter Luff (Worcester) under the 10-min- ute rule procedure, would require publishers to print fHp recommended Tniniimim readership age on the maga- zines’ cover or face a fine.

Last night publishers dis- missed the measure as unnec- essary and warned that a minimum age cm a magazine would tend to attract those who were younger.

The1 Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) said teen- age magazines were aware of their responsibilities and warned of practical difficul- ties in implementing the mea- sure. PPA chief executive Ian Locks waid- “if implemented it would have to cover news- papers, which are read by ffhiiriran and frequently con- tain magazines for children, and presumably books as walL

“By and large these maga- zines are getting it absolutely right There are instances that cause comment and con- cern — maybe we could find better ways of ensuring we reach the right target mar- kets. Bat putting age limits on them is not the best way of doing it Doing what Mr Luff suggests could exacerbate the problem.”

Mr Locks said there were already disincentives for magazines overstepping the mark. "When major retailers delist a title as unsuitable,

' that is a very powerful sanc- tion. In the end it has to be up to parents to ensure that what their children reed is suitable for their age group and that individual child.”

A glance at several teenage magazines on sale this month reveals a substantial helping of sex. More!, aimed at older readers but inevitably read by younger girls too. offers a "Valentine's special steamy sex test”.

Sugar, billing itself Brit- ain's number one girts’ mag, includes a 16-page booklet en- titled: “Stop! Do you really know enough about sex?". Among the items is “condom conundrum”. “I had an abortion” and “the no-sex guide to fun”.

Mizz, includes a double page spread of a male model

Soldier

eases

girl’s

pain

continued from page 1 ing. so I don't get the benefits that come to the widow of a Sehid [martyr].”

The sergeant-major's deter- mination to improve Hurmi- Ja’s life and his flair for organisation have generated a fundraising effort which has drawn in soldiers from across the Nato-led force.

"Everyday, I have letters — and people who've heard about Hurmija, coming up to me — offering help or just handing over money,” he said.

He has set up an account for the young girl and has begun to organise an appeal A British soldier is offering to run a flmdraising marathon, a French major has written two emotional poems about her, and an anonymous American officer sent cash in an envelope. Sgt-Major Fergu- son's daughter, Charlotte, has

Between the covers — A selection of teenage magazines promoting the sexual content that has offended MPs

The writer and broadcaster Clare Rayner, who prompted questions in the House qf Com- mons when, as an agony aunt in the 1960s. she answered a reader who inquired: “What is wanking?”

We had exactly the same shrieks over the teenage magazines in the late 60s and early 70s. There's noth- ing new under the sun. What it bolls down to is that children want information. They are sizzling with sex and curiosity. '

All the evidence is that the more Information they get, the less sexually active they become. To keep parents happy I would quite like to see some sort of clas- sification, rather like the classification for videos, so parents can see this is not a magazine for 11-year-olds tnzt aimed at 16-year-olds. Bat not censorship.

I would rather my own children, got information from a magazine rather than frombehind the bike shed. At least It’s accurate.

on a bed of red satin, the sheet pulled discreetly over his groin. In 19, there are “Seven steps to sexual heaven,” in which psychologist Susan Qullliam advises readers that “feeling bad about your bod is a nookie no-no”.

Peter Luff who has two children, one of whom is a 10- year-old girl said the aim of his bill which has cross-party support, was to draw atten-

Sgt-Major Vic Ferguson with 12-year-old Hurmija

organised a "sponsored silence” in her school “We're not under the illu- sion that she’s ever going to walk again.” said Petty Offi- cer Phil Ball, a British Navy photographer helping the cause. “We Just want her to have a better quality of life.” The plan is to fly Hurmija to the Stoke Mandeville hos-

Maura Townsend, aged 42. of Withington, Manchester, whose 14-year-old daughter Shelly Is a keen reader

I think these magazines are far too sexually explicit. But I would rather she reads them. At least she dis- cusses things with me. Things like “seven steamy sex tips” and “is your boy- friend a good lover” — I think it’s just encouraging under-age sex.

I would not try to stop her becanse I think if that’s - what she wants to read, that’s fine. At my convent boarding school I can remember being caught reading Fanny £011: Mem- oirs of a Woman ofPlea- sure. [John Cleland’s 18th- century pornographic novel], I nearly got expelled for that

I don’t think this Bill is going to work. It’s about as likely as stopping under- age kids from buying ciga- rettes. rm just lucky I’ve got a daughter who is very sensible.

lion to an issue of growing concern to parents.

‘1 was horrified when I looked into these magazines in detail I’ve been impressed by the number of letters and telephone calls we've had from parents who’ve said they just didn't realise.

‘Tm not saying my bill is a perfect solution. It’s just a way of giving a bit more in- , formation to parents — an ;

Brave words

Extract from a letter from Hurmija to Sgt-Major Ferguson's a 1-year-old daughter, Charlotte:

“We were sitting and play- ing under an apple tree. Suddenly one shell landed on the tree. At first, I felt Uke I was Hying. I tried to stand but I just couldn't.

“The days at the hospital are difficult. My mother and sisters come every day. And your father too. His visits are very Important.

. He's so nice and generous, and I love him very much. Yon are very lucky to have I Vic as a father.

“I had a wonderful father too, but I don't know if Tm ever going to see him again. I always hope. I hope that I will walk again one day. I hope that m have my fam- ily in one place, and I also hope you’ll answer my let- ter very soon.”

pital in Britain, where she could be trained to move around with mechanical aids.

To get her into the hospital will take a £50.000 deposit A rehabilitation course will probably cost nearer £150,000. So for, Sgt-Major Ferguson has collected £6,000, but he has made Hurmija a promise — and refuses to give up.

Shelly Townsend aged 14

1 used to read Just Seven- teen all the time. I've been reading it since X was ll. When I look back, I think for 11-year-olds there’s a bit too much about sex and stuff. Tm more into music magazines now, though sometimes I get tilings like Mizz and Sugar.

I think they’re OK, but there are stories on every page about sex and the problems people have. I think they should cut down a hit. We want to read differ- ent things as well — inter- views with pop stars and things like that.

The problem pages say' things like: 'Tm 14 and I’ve done this and that.” It makes people think: “Well, I'm 14 and I haven't done that yet” That* s-what I used to think.

My mum’s really open about tilings like that, we can talk about it, but I know that some Of my friends’ parents are a bit hush-hush. So magazines can be useful-

extra bit of guidance. And it’s not just tiie sexually explicit stuff These magazines are deeply sexist. They're all about sex and preparing your- self for boys. Nothing about the other things girls should be thinking about — careers or sporting heroes.”

Neil Raaschou, managing director of Attic Future, pub- lishers of TV Hits, yesterday agreed his magazine may

Kate Freeman, 12, qfWoldng. Surrey

X read Sugar, It’s Bliss and

Riwanh Hih. T i)nn*t think

they should be banned or anything. I think they’re really good. There’s advjce and stuff which is interest- ing, and It’s not all about sex.

X do think the sex should be there. We need to know about that kind of stuff. I can talk to my mum but some people can’t At school we talk about periods and things, but nothing else.

T th in It tTn» magazines are quite responslble.Most of it is just saying that you should never let someone do anything you don’twant to. You should only do itif you’re really happy. They go on about the age limit the whole time. I don’t think it encourages anyone.

It isn't really relevant to me at the moment — I haven’t gut boyfriends yet. But It will be relevant one day . I need to know no w so I can think ahead.

have slightly mishandled the question about oral sex, but generally publishers of teen- age magazines were ex- tremely responsible.

“Parents need to be reas- sured and be confident that the information their chil- dren are reading is being handled very respsonsibly by the publishers. These maga- zines provided a very Impor- tant service to teenagers."

Richard Horton-Tayfor

SIR Richard Scott has hit back at Whitehall-in- spired attempts to undermine his anns-to-Iraq inquiry, describing criticism in advance of the publication of his long-awaited report as “worthless”.

Although he does not men- tion any names, his com- ments are directed above all at Lord Howe, the former for- eign secretary, who has led the attacks tm the way Sir

Richard conducted the inquiry's public hearings.

Lord* Howe described Sir Richard and Presiley Baxen- dale. the inquiry's counsel in a recent article in the Specta- tor, as “partners in a double- barrelled inquisition". He said the inquiry should have been conducted on adver- sarial lines, with witnesses examined by their own law- yers and cross-examination.

But the judge says in an interview in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme to be broadcast tomorrow: ' This is an inquisitorial inquiry and I do' not see bow you can have an inquisitorial inquiry with- out it being inquisitorial" The important requirement, he says, is that the procedure should be fair.

Sir Richard sent witnesses questions in advance and gave the opportunity to comment on provisional criti- cisms in draft extracts of his report Witnesses have also had free access to legal advice — Lord Howe has hired a large City law firm paid for out of public funds.

“I hope that people will read [die report] and they will not form their opinion of it simply from a view being thrust upon them by sources who have not read if Sir Richard says. “Criticism in advance of reading it has got to be worthless, and I hope the public will realise that” The judge is concerned that his report will be used as a political football, diverting attention away from the unprecedented insight it gives into the workings of British government He says he regrets that the initial reception of the report will be coloured by party politics.

He says he hopes his report will be considered seriously, without preconception, and that bis recommendations will be accepted by the Government

He adds: “The people who have uttered these criticisms were not on my Christmas card list anyway and they are not about to go on it”

An inquiry conducted along the lines proposed by Lord Howe was proposed by Labour and the Liberal Demo- crats but rejected by the Gov- ernment on the grounds that it would take too long. Lord Donaldson, former Master of the Rolls, has said that if witnesses’ lawyers had the opportunity to cross-examine, “it wouldn't be an inquiry, it would be a circus”.

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‘Buddha’s birthplace’ unearthed in Nepal

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BUDDHISM’S equivalent of Dthe stable in Bethlehem has been discovered in Nepal an international team of ar- chaeologists announced yes- terday. They said a stone on a platform of bricks buried 16ft under a temple marked where Prince Siddhartha Gautama, founder of the religion, was horn 2,600 years ago.

The relics are under the

Mayadevi temple in Lumbinl 200 nines south-west of Kath- mandu. and date from the era of Emperor Ashoka, who ruled much of the subconti- nent The archaeologists — from Nepal India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Japan — made the discovery nine months ago, but the government de- layed an announcement "until it had consulted experts.

Buddhist literature says that the Buddha's mother. Queen Mahamaya, dreamt in

623 BC that “a white elephant j beautiful as silver" entered her womb. While travelling she passed Lumbinl She went i into labour, bathed In a ; sacred pond and gave birth, j

According to this account, Emperor Ashoka placed a! stone on bricks at the birth- place, plus a pillar which still stands. Babu Krishna Rijsl an archaeologist with Lum- bini Development Trust, said a detailed report would even- tually be made public.

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NEWS 3

Yeovil, scene of Ore bombings and other attacks

‘Utterly disgraceful’ report of alleged claims by former massage parlour owner follows Liberal Democrat leader’s stand against racial attacks in Somerset seat

Paddy Ashdown in Yeovil yesterday ‘I will take the actions necessary to make sure those who commit crimes are brought to book’ photographs nu cuff

Ashdown sues paper over ‘sex smear5 story

Geoffrey Gibbs

THE Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ash- down yesterday launched a libel action against a Bristol-based daily newspaper for publish- ing what he called “an utterly disgraceful" article referring to a smear campaign about his personal life.

Under the banner headline "Sex Smear on Paddy”, the Western Daily Press repeated allegations said to have been made against the MP by Peter Stoodley. former owner of a Yeovil massage parlour dosed down by the Liberal Democrat controlled district council two years ago.

The massage parlour — - a brothel in all but name — was the cause of acute embarrass- ment for Yeovil's Lib Denis in November 1994 when it emerged that Nikki Vickers, the daughter of a former lib- eral democrat mayor who had sat on the planning comittee that forced the establish-

ment's closure, had worked there as a prostitute.

Mr Stoodley. whose nephew was one of three men arrested and released on police bail in connection with last week's firebomb attack on Mr Ash- down's car, is understood to have tried to pass the story to a number of national news- papers before its publication in Bristol yesterday.

The 53-year-old grand- father, jailed for six months for living on immoral earn- ings of women at the City Girl establishment, was not avail- able for comment at the flat he owns dose to the Liberal Democrat constituency of- fices in the town centre.

Mr Ashdown, who has rep- resented Yeovil for 13 years, has been the target of threat- ening phone calls since tak- ing a high profile stand against racist attacks in tire Somerset town. He said he had been aware of the allega- tions for some time.

Liberal democrats have been bracing themselves for the possibility that the

smears will be raised in court later this week, when Mr Ash- down is expected to be a wit- ness in committal proceed- ings involving a man charged with affray and possession of an offensive weapon.

Hie 51-year-old man is al- leged to have threatened Mr Ashdown with a knife during a street incident last Novem- ber when the former marine commando was on a late night fact-finding tour of the town to see for himself the problems faced by Yeovil's tiny ethnic population.

Mr Ashdown refused to comment on the smears yes- terday but made it dear that he would not let them deter him from stamping out “the scourge of terrorisation and intimidation" in the town. If required to do so he would be in court as a witness for the pending hearing.

“I am not prepared to be dissuaded from taking action," he said at the party’s constituency offices yester- day. “That is what the town has suffered from for so long.

And I will follow through, in the face of whatever deterrent or whatever threat, the actions that I think are neces- sary in order to make sure that those who commit crimes in this town are brought to book."

A spokesman for Mr Ash- down’s lawyers, who served the writ on Bristol United Press, publishers of the West- ern Daily Press. sai± “They have plunged like some ele- phant into a trap of their own making. I can’t believe it”

Western Daily Press editor Ian Beales was said by the paper's newsdesk to be un- available for comment

The sex smear allegations against Mr Ashdown and the recent arson attack that de- stroyed the MP’s car close to his home in the village of Nor- to n-Sub-Hamd on are the cul- mination of a complex series of events that have brought unwelcome notoriety to Som- erset’s third largest town.

The MP has fallen foul of some elements in the town after taking a leading role in

the Partnership Against Racial Harassment in Somer- set, a cross-party coalition es- tablished last autumn in the wake of the fire bombing of a Kebab, house run by an ethnic

Turkish family

Other restaurants in the same part of town have also suffered attacks and' restau- rant owners and staff com- plain of frequent incidents of verbal and physical abuse. The population of Banglade- shi, Turkish, Thai and Iran- ian restaurant owners and staff make up 0.5 per cent of the town's 38,000 population. They have found themselves isolated and vulnerable.

Contrary to tabloid myth, however, Yeovil is no Wild West town. Despite the high profile coverage given to the firebomb attack on Mr Ash- down’s car and to the earlier street incident in which the MP.-was allegedly threatened with a knife, law and order has not experienced a general breakdown. Newspaper talk of gangs of “ciderheads" and “boomtown rats” on the ram-

page provokes bemusement among local people.

Rumours persist that some of the trouble may be linked to protection rackets. But res- idents say the police have been frustrated in trying to get convictions because po- tential witnesses often fear retaliation.

Questions about who is ulti- mately behind the firebombs and other attacks that have blackened the town’s reputa- tion elicits the same names.

"There is a hard core gang of two or three families — men in their 20s, 30s and 40s — who are behind these sort of attacks.” said one observer of the town's troubles who asked not to be named. “They have henchmen who carry them out for them and any- body who stands up against them is threatened and target- ed. It’s not just racism.”

Councillors and social workers in the town are among those understood to have laced threats after cross- ing the families concerned.

Police are currently investi-

gating a number of fire- related incidents in the town, including a firebomb attack on the offices of the Western Gazette newspaper last Octo- ber which caused £100,000 damage. No one has been ar- rested, but staff are convinced the attack was triggered by the leading role the Gazette has played In highlighting racist attacks in the town.

After speaking out at the time of the alleged knife attack on their local MP mem- bers of die ethnic population are now reluctant to talk for fear of provoking further trouble.

Silence has not brought respite however. Only a week after Mr Ashdown's late night tour a mob gathered in “ta- keaway alley" shouting abuse and threatening staff in a tan- doori restaurant

Staff at the restaurant said people were too scared to eat there because of the troubles. “Look around the restaurant iFs empty. We've been ruined by what's happened," one worker said.

China fuels war of nerves

Andrew Higgins In Hong Kong

IN ITS fiercest display yet in an escalating battle of nerves with Taiwan, China has reportedly massed up to 400,000 troops in a coastal area newly designated a "war zone" prior to a massive, month-long military exercise.

As tear of the People's Lib- eration Army again jolted Taiwan's stock exchange, its president Lee Teng-hui, yes- terday said Beijing's war games showed the Commu- nist Party is "scared to death" of the island's burgeoning democracy.

Military sources confirmed troop movements In Fujian province facing Taiwan in preparation for exercises.

An unconfirmed report in Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily said China would deploy 3U0 warplanes, 20 elite infantry unite, submarines and mis- sile-bearing boats.

It quoted an unnamed Chi- nese official saying any Inter- ference by Taiwanese ships or planes would make a clash “difficult to avoid”.

China's manoeuvres, ex- pected to start this week, pro- vide a menacing counterpoint to campaigning in Taiwan for elections at the end of March.

“March 23. 1996. is an im- portant day In Chinese his- tory because it is the first time the country holds demo- cratic presidential elections,"

President Lee said yesterday in Taipei. “The Chinese com- munists are scared to death of this historic event”

Beijing sees the poll as a ploy to perpetuate Taiwan's status as a separate political

entity' and has denounced i

President Lee as bent on push- ing it towards independence.

Beijing hopes military threats will hurt Mr Lee’s chances of victory, or force him to abandon efforts to in- crease Taiwan’s profile.

But a new study of the PLA by the Stockholm Interna- tional Peace Institute doubts whether China bas the capa- bility to launch an effective assault. However, political uncertainty has sparked fears that the imperatives of inter- nal power-struggles could override military logic.

The tension is causing deep unease in the United States.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that US officials had decided to formally warn China that “heightened ten- sion could lead to miscalcula- tion and accident".

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Taste of the future put to the test

Gary Younge seeks expert opinion on genetically altered tomato puree

an open mind Tand a refined palate _ _ Mariano Casotti brought the spoonful of gen- etically modified Californian tomato puree to his mouth and tasted the future.

"Not much difference" he said of the puree, on sale for the first time in Sainsbury and Safeway stores yesterday. He smacked his lips, washed his spoon and went back to his traditionally grown Ital- ian puree for further comparison.

What Mr Casotti does not know about pasta and sauces is probably not worth know- ing. FOr the past 35 years the assistant executive chef to Spaghetti House has been up and making the company's pasta by the tubful while the rest of the country has scarcely thought of breakfast.

But taste, he says, isn’t everything. “The colour ts very rich and dark which could deaden the colour of meat to a bolognese sauce. And the texture is slightly rougher . . . more starchy," he said, absent-mindedly patting both dishes of red goo smooth with the bottom of his spoon.

He conferred to Italian with Riccardo Lavarini to onsure the two connoisseurs spoke with one. satiated, tongue. "Without comparing actual dishes it is a little difficult to say but usually we use puree just for colouring the sauces, said Mr Lavarini, the director of Spaghetti House.

“1 must say I'm a little un- comfortable with the name. People like to think that they are getting freshly prepared

Mariano Casotti with the new puree photograph: gahhy weaser

food. This sounds a little too scientific.”

It took 21 years of research to produce the 29p can of puree in question. The big breakthrough came' in 1988 when they isolated the en- zyme which accelerates the rotting process in tomatoes, allowing growers to produce longer-lasting, firmer-tex- tured fruit

The benefits are that firmer tomatoes will not go squashy when they are handled: more tomatoes are harvested; more arrive at shops intact and once there they do not deteri- orate as quickly.

The Sainsbury’s version comes with a special leaflet reassuring customers that all ethical considerations have been taken into account It has even earned the approval of their advisory committee on genetic modification. "We treat the ethical issues relat- ing to genetically modifed

products on a case by case basis. With tomatoes there did not Seem to be a prob- lem.'' said a Sainsbury's spokesman last night, insist- ing that demand will deter- mine how long it remains on the shelves. For the sceptics there is freefone number for further explanation.

For those who just want something cheap and tasty to put on their pizza bases most of the information is on the tin.

“There Is a European pro- posal that novel foods — if they are substantially differ- ent from the brigfaals — will have to be labelled. And they will have to be labelled if there is an ethical or religious consideration.” said Dr Gavin Cree of the Bioindustry Association yesterday.

But for Mr Casotti the proof of the puree, genetically mod- ified or not, will always be in. the eating.

Gene genius

BEYOND the genetically modified tomato lie huge possibilities, writes Tim Radford. Some are ready for testing, some are twinkles in the geneticists’ eyes. They include:

□ The hairy killer potato with “a high density of glandular trichomes" transferred from a wild po- tato. Any Colorado beetle that eats the leaves will suf- fer serious constipation, crushing its ovaries. Any smaller creature will get stuck to the hairs.

□ Tracey the sheep is a po- tential lifesaver in a field near Edinburgh. In each litre of her milk are 35 grains of human alpba-1- anti trypsin, a protein vital in the treatment of emphy- sema or cystic fibrosis.

□ Michigan State Universi- ty scientists have taken a gene from a bacterium that makes tiny amounts of bio- degradable thermoplastic and slipped it into sugar beet hoping to turn 10 per cent of the harvest into in- dustrial-grade polymer.

□ Astrid the pig at Cam- bridge has a gene for pro- ducing human complement, which recognises foreign tissue and rejects it. This opens the way to supplying heart transplants for hu- mans from pigs.

□ Genes that make a jelly- fish gleam have been trans- ferred to a tobacco plant which glows when it is at- tacked by fungus — allow- ing farmers to isolate af- fected plants for treatment.

^JgLords, even divested of hereditary voters, would remain an abuse of democracy the country's biggest quango. And no ordinary quango, but a dolled-up doppelganger for the Commons, stuffed with placelords and placeladies whose political allegiances neatly matched those of their creators.

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Lilley put in dock over refugees

The Guardian Tuesday February 6 1996

Alan Travis Home Affairs Editor

THE High Court yester- day cleared the way

for a legal challenge

to the Government’s decision to withdraw welfare benefits from up to 30.000 asylum seekers a year.

A fUll judicial review hear- ing to be held on Wednesday could lead to a high court in- junction against Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary.

The case will be heard alongside challenges brought by both Westminster, and Hammersmith and Fulham councils, also claiming Mr Lilley has acted illegally. The benefit cuts came into effect from midnight yesterday.

Hie action brought yester- day by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants claims the £200 million a year benefit cuts were ultra vires and improper because they would effectively curtail asylum seekers' ability to pursue claims to be refugees.

Mr Justice Brooke agreed the council had “an arguable case" that asylum seekers were entitled to be treated as genuine refugees until their claims were determined, and were therefore entitled to claim benefits unless and until their claims were proved bogus.

Mr Lilley’s counsel in

court, Steven Kovats, fiercely resisted the suggestion that the benefit cuts were in any way illegal — but he did con- cede there would be "individ- ual cases of hardship”.

He also said it was a matter of political judgment to bal-

ance public expenditure sav- ings and the large number of unsuccessful appeals against those individual cases.

The Government also de- nied that the United Nations conventions on Refugees and the Rights of the Child were

part of English law.

But Nicholas Blake, QC. for the council, said there were 267 cases last year of people who were recognised as refu- gees only when their appeals were heard. They would be among those no longer eligi- ble to claim housing benefit, income support or other wel- fare benefits.

He said the measures could lead to destitute immigrant families being driven on to the streets — or "improperly forced" to return to countries where they feared persecu- tion. The regulations were an unlawful means to dissuade asylum seekers from pursu- ing appeals.

Last night council spokes- man Claude Moraes said he was delighted at the decision. He said the action aimed to ensure that asylum seekers had the health and suste- nance to make their claims and pursue their appeals.

Both Labour and Liberal Democrats demanded that the Government think again and withdraw the regulations.

Chris Smith. Labour's social services spokesman, who said the judge had clearly shared his misgivings about the impact of the changes, claimed the decision was a major setback for Mr Lilley.

The Liberal Democrats said they hoped the full judicial review succeeded.

Firefighters gather outside the Department of the Environment offices in London yesterday to protest about threatened cuts in the fire service

HIKE FIGHTERS protesting ■ about job cuts in London demonstrated outside the De- partment of the Environment yesterday, writes Alex Bellos. They are angry that hundreds

of jobs will be lost and four stations face closure because of a funding controversy.

London's fire authority claims its budget has been cut by millions of pounds. It says

it has to make savings by los- ing jobs, closing stations and withdrawing a number of ap- pliances.

Meanwhile in Bristol, col- leagues of 21-year-old Fleur

Lombard, the first British woman firefighter to die on service, paid her a silent trib- ute. Members of her blue watch from Speedwell fire station, north Bristol, laid flo-

ral tributes at the super- market where she died on Sunday. They ringed the main entrance of the Co-op store in Staple Hill, where Ms Lombard was one of the first

PHOTOGRAPH- GARRY IVEASER

to enter with firefighter Rob Seaman.

Mr Seaman, who escaped with slight injuries, was recovering yesterday at home.

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Hit squad shot soccer player during match

Erfend Ctouston

EMBERS Of a hit squad who attempted to assassinate the wrong man during a football match were yesterday sent to jail for a total of 65 years.

The sentences, believed to be the Longest ever imposed in Scotland for a crime other than murder, followed an at- tempt to silence a witness.

Glasgow High Court heard that only luck and a faulty pistol had prevented whole- sale slaughter during the match between Hillhouse Am- ateurs and Barrhead Moor at Uplawmoor. near Glasgow, on October 14 last year.

Robert Taylor, aged 28, Andrew Elliott; aged 31, both of Glasgow, and 37-year-old Easdale Campbell, from Ham- ilton. were told by Lord John- ston that there were no grounds for exercising mercy in a case in which a Hillhouse fullback, waiting for a corner, received two bullets instead.

The court was told that the gunman's target should have been the Hillhouse treasurer, John Martin. A former friend of Campbell, he had been due to be a witness at a trial in which Campbell's son and an-

Old Etonian in gem fraud freed after paying £227,000

Charles Ballantyne, the defender shot in error

other youth were charged with stabbing his nephew.

The would-be killers, how- ever, mistook left back Charles Ballantyne for Mr Martin. As the 32-year-old British Telecom worker from Motherwell prepared for the comer with Hillhouse com- fortably ahead 4-€, he spotted Taylor pointing a gun at his head and then heard his six-

year-old son shout: “My daddy's been shot."

The first bullet lodged just above Mr BaUantyne’s left ear. As he tried to crawl away Taylor fired again, but this time the bullet glanced off his back. The crowd pursued Taylor who shot and missed again.

Before Elliott held back the shocked spectators with what he claimed was a shotgun wrapped in a roll of paper. Taylor tried three times to fire his pistol, but the firing pin was off-line.

Campbell, who had been waiting nearby, then drove the two men off in his car. They were cornered by police after a SKfrnph chase.

Taylor, who pleaded guilty half way through the trial, was sentenced to 25 years, five of which were for firing on the crowd. His companions were each sentenced to 20 years.

Afterwards, a Strathclyde policeman said the men had broken every rule in the mafia hitman's manual: "Campbell used his own car, they tried to carry out an exe- cution not only in front of wit- nesses but in the middle of a football field, and then they shot the wrong man.”

Barbie Putter

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p\ARIUS Guppy, the Old LJ Etonian convicted of a £1.8 million Insurance swindle, was released from prison yesterday after pay- ing £227,000 in compensa- tion to Lloyd's of London.

Guppy, aged 30. had served three years of a five year sentence for staging a bogus gems robbery in New York in 1990, then fraudu- lently claiming insurance damages. He was sent back to prison in December after failing to obey an order to compensate the insurers.

Guppy, who was best man at the wedding of the Prin- cess of Wales's brother, Earl Spencer, had been freed pending an appeal against a second, three- year prison term, but his bail order was revoked by a High Court judge and he spent Christmas in Ford open prison In Sussex.

Guppy set up the fraud with Benedict Marsh, his partner in a jewellery firm. They paid an associate £10,000 to tie them up and supposedly rob them at gunpoint Their false in- voices for £1.8 million worth of stones were paid by underwriting syndi- cates. Both were Jailed for five years in March 1993.

In April 1994, Guppy lost an appeal against the length of his jail term, but his £535,000 fine was replaced with a £227,000 compensation order.

Smear re-tests ‘not alarming’

Chris Madll

Medical Correspondent

Thousands of women are to have their cervi- cal smears re-examined after missed abnormalities were found, a health author- ity said yesterday.

Health chiefs said the moves were proof that safety checks were working rather than evidence of blunders.

Women in Kent and Canter- bury who had smears be- tween 1990 and 1995 are to have their slides reviewed by an independent laboratory.

The hospital admitted that possibly 700 women who had been told they were in the clear might have had some suspicious signs on their slides, although that did not mean they had cancer.

No women are being recalled for fresh tests, but they will be informed of the findings within 14 days, The move follows a review by out- side laboratories which found some abnormalities on the slides had been missed.

Kent and Canterbury car- ries out 27,000 smears a year, and as part of quality control procedures sent some 11,000 slides to two labs in Manches- ter and Birmingham for double-checking. The results suggested there were ques- tion marks over 89 of them.

Michael Milligan, clinical director of obstetrics and gyn- aecology for Sent and Canter- bury NHS Trust, said: "It is important to remember that cervical screening is used to

detect something which should be investigated — it does not diagnose cancer."

The NHS Cervical Screen- ing Programme, the national screening body, pointed out that all health authorities and laboratories were now en- rolled tn quality assurance programmes using external examiners to Judge standards, and work was continuing to ensure all screeners reached consistent standards.

National co-ordinator Jul- lietta Patnick said deaths from cervical cancer had fallen from 1.485 in 1993 to 1,396 in 1994 largely due to the programme's effectiveness.

She added: "No screening programme is lOO per cent ac- curate but the NHSCSP is working to improve the accu- racy of interpretation of smears by laboratories and to increase the consistency with which abnormalities are clas- sified as minor or severe.”

Cervical screeners ex- plained that smears are exam- ined using microscopes to look at cell changes on slides, but interpreting sometimes very small abnormalities was a matter of judgment rather than a clear-cut science.

Kate Neales, consultant gynaecologist at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, said: ■Women should not be un- duly alarmed, but should be encouraged that we are tak- ing these steps to improve our services for the future."

The hospital yesterday opened a telephone helpline for worried patients: 01227 7666016.

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BRITAIN 5

Labour presses for franchise re-run after allegations of ticket fraud on Southend line

Inquiry risk to rail licence

Rebecca Smithers ■fid Keith Harper

The government

conceded yesterday that the inquiry into an alleged ticket fraud on the London Tilbury and South- end rail line might force it to withdraw the licence from the present holders. Enterprise Rail, and hold a second round of bidding for the franchise.

Sir George Young, the Transport Secretary, told the Commons that any decision about withdrawing the licence would have to be

taken by the government-ap- pointed franchising director. Roger Salmon. .

Labour preyed for a com- mitment that the franchising would be rerun, and called on the financial backers of Enterprise Rail, a manage- ment buy-out team, to clarify whether they plan to with- draw their support for the company.

Just hours after heralding the transfer of the two other passenger businesses — South West Trains and Great Western — at a ceremony at Waterloo station. Sir George was summoned to the Com- mons to answer an emer-

gency question from Sir Teddy Taylor, whose South- end constituency is on the line in question.

The allegations relate to the re-issuing of tickets at a station used both by mainline and Tube trains, which has deprived London Under- ground of up to £45,000 over the last six weeks.

Clare Short, the shadow transport secretary, urged Sir George to “give us an under- taking that the offer to allow this management team to nm this service win be with- drawn ... if the allegations are true".

Sir George said that, de-

pending on the outcome of the investigations by British Rail and the Government's own regulators, the final decision was down to Mr Salmon.

Despite Mr Salmon’s assur- ances yesterday that he ex- pected the privatisation to be

back on track within a month, he promised that there was no question of the investigation being rushed.

Labour’s rail spokesman, Brian Wilson, separately stepped up pressure over the

alleged fraud by demanding that the private company's fi- nancial backers, 3i and Gresham Trust, should state them position.

“The question is whether reputable investors want any- thing to do with the alleged malpractices which go hand in hand with the fragmenta- tion and privatisation of the railways".

Sir George also confirmed

that, following the resigna- tion last week of Colin An- drews, commercial director of LTS Rail, another senior staff member had been suspended. This was later established to be Ian Burton, retail manager of LTS. who worked closely with Mr Andrews.

Chris Einchen-Smlth. LTS's managing director, ex- plained that Mr Burton had

also carried out duties involv- ing passenger safety.

A second investigation has been launched into LTS. Its managers are said to have quietly withdrawn the compa- ny's penalty fares scheme be- cause they felt that not enough passengers without tickets were being caught to justify costs.

Warning posters at stations have remained in place and the rail regulator. John Swift, is concerned that passengers could be misled into thinking that the penalty' fares scheme is still in operation. He is ex- pected to demand the immedi- ate withdrawal of the posters.

Holman Hunt’s masterpiece The Light of the World undergoes expert examination yesterday after being removed from St Paul’s Cathedral in London for conservation work. The picture, one of three versions painted by the artist, has been stained by candle smoke and the fingers of the faithful but should be back In place by summer photograph- frank martin

News in brief

Jail threat for Tory ex-leader

THE former deputy Tory leader of Lambeth Council, south London, faces a jail sentence after pleading guilty yesterday to

procurin g a mortgage by deception and five counts of dishon- estly obtaining housing benefit ii

„ in 1994 to pay his mortgage.

Peter John Evans. 35. who resigned on Sunday, was remanded on bail at Snaresbrook crown court for pre-sentence and psychiatric reports. Judge Andrew Brooks said: "I don't want you to leave the dock thinking you are going to get a way with this. I am thinking of passings custodial sentence.’’.

Blizzard halts murder dig

A BUZZARD yesterday brought a halt to an attempt to solve the suspected murder or Danny Dyke, aged 31. an osteopath who operated as a drug dealer. South Wales police bad started digging near a village of Gamswllt in West Glamorgan but had to abandon the search when the snow became too heavy.

Mr Dyke, a former physiotherapist with the Welsh rugby club, Aberavon. and said to have been a supplier of cocaine and cannabis, went missing from his home in Eastbourne, East Sussex in April ifiw. He was last seen in Swansea and his car was found in a carpark in Brecon. Powvs. — Duncan Campbell

Footballer’s fatal kick

A WOLVERHAMPTON Wanderers footballer, James Kelly, killed a man by kicking his head like a football in an early morning brawl outside a hotel Liverpool crown court heard yesterday.

Peter Dunphy, 26. collapsed and lay still and died almost instantly from the blow to the base of the skull and upper neck, said prosecuting counsel David Steer. QC. Kelly, of Willenhall, west Midlands, has admitted manslaughter. His brother, John Kelly, 23. of Everton, and Kevin Atkinson, 22, ofTuebrook, both Liverpool have admitted assault The case continues today.

Remand decision defended

SOCIAL service staff yesterday defended a decision to house a youth on remand in a flat attached to an old people's home, because of a national shortage of secure accommodation.

The 14-year-old boy. remanded into the care of Calderdale council West Yorkshire, by a juvenile court was placed in the flat under one- tonne supervision when all other options failed. The council emphasised yesterday that the rooms in Halifax had a separate entrance to the adjacent Claremont House elderly people’s home. A spokeswoman said: “We are making every effort to find suitable accommodation to meet his individual needs, but there is a national shortage of this and similar demands are being made by other authorities." — Martin Wainwright

Lottery plea to rural districts

RURAL areas which were significantly under-represented in millennium lottery grants were urged yesterday by Jennifer Page, foe chid- executive of the Millennium Commission, to get in more applications. Hie second round of applications closes next week, and the third and probably final round in July. By the end cf the year foe commission expects to have allocated all its £1 2 billion fund for capital grants.

“We have racked our brains cm why the rural applicants are not coming forward.” she told a seminar in London. '"There may be some mistaken be lief that grants are destined only for grand metropolitan projects." When foe commissioners canvassed pub- lic opinion they found overwhelming support for environmental and community projects. — Maa) Kennedy

Power station in movie bid

MOVE over Pinewood, stand aside Baling. The future aFBri tain’s film industry may he in the great turbine hall of a redundant power station at Trawsfynydd, near Blaenau Festmiog, in Wales. A consortium of local councils is promoting foe huge concrete hulk as an ideal home for complex movie sets. — Martin Wainright

Row erupts as Booker alters rules

Mcfiael EMson Arts Correspondent

BRITAIN’S best-known book prize had barely recovered from the recent shock of selecting a rel- atively uncontroversial win- ner when it re-established its reputation for conflict yesterday.

A good 10 months before the next Booker Prize will be awarded to succeed Pat Barker, literary publishers were angered by a change in tbe rules. The judges had to plough through a record 141 novels last year and organis- ers decided something must be done to prevent word- fatigue.

They agreed to reduce the numbers publishers could enter from three to two, plus one by any previously short- listed writer and another by any past winner.

As disputes go. it might seem tame compared with the

‘Before winning I always thought the best thing about the prize would be never having to think about the Booker again in your life. I'd still be happy with that, but I don t think my publisher Would’

— Pat Barker

rows over suggestions that the award might be scrapped (the late Sir Kingsley Amis): claims of persistent exclusion from the shortlist (Martin Amis); the selection of James Kelman as winner in 1994; and the observation that mod- ern fiction is ' an “ordeal” (John Bayley, chairman of the judges, also 1994).

But Dan Franklin, publish-

ing director of Cape, said: ‘Tm appalled by the rule change. Reducing tbe num- bers entered means you will end up with a dull safe list. In the old days you would dis- cover new writers, not the ob- vious people. Now you’re .never going to get any first novels on there, or difficult or dangerous books."

Liz Colder, publishing di-

rector of Bloomsbury, said: "I think It’s pretty feeble to feel the need to cut back. I should feel sorry for the judges, read hundreds of books every week.

"If it was left to me, pub- lishers would not have to make the first choice; the judges should w»u in foe books they want to consider.

A spokeswoman for the prize's management commit- tee, which changed the rules, said: “The problem is that the publishers all went a bit mad last year, really. We had to get the number of books down, and this is the only sensible way of doing it"

Barker, who won the £20,000 prize two months ago with The Ghost Road, said: “Before winning, I always thought the best thing about the prize would be never hav- ing to think about tbe Booker again in your life. I’d stOl be happy with that but I don't think my publisher would be.”

Crofters offered ownership in Highlands funding deal

Erlend dauarton

TWO of the shackles on the

Highland economy were

loosened yesterday with the announcement of plans that could revolutionise both land ownership patterns and .con- tact with the outside world.

About 1.400 crofters are to be offered the chance to take ever — in some cases without charge — their government- owned estates.

business activity expected to spring from this should be aided8 by a £46 mi^on tele- communications network

which will ultimately bring 95 per cent of the region within mobile phone range.

Details of the schemes were outlined by the Sco^ Sec- rotary. Michael Fwgth, .at the first tojei^sjthng of the Scottish Grand Cmaolk tee. He unveiled a jf

European Unwn and Prieto sector funding to the region worth £130 million ^ than 1,000 w jobs. Aroimd E4 million of EU todmgwiU m towards the

tive of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said foe invest- ment would be invaluable to northern businessmen, as well as offering “potentially lifesaving benefits” to medi- cal staff, fishermen, hill- walkers and motorists.

A farther £3J million aTEU foods will enable Barmac's fabrication yard at Nigg in Easter Ross to compete in foe international market for float- ing oil production systems.

Land reformers, who blame indifferent estate owners for the stagnation of many High- land communities, will hope that the plan to divest foe Scottish Office of its 65 mil- lion crofting acres, presages the break-up of a system which has blighted the area for more than two centuries.

Mr Forsyth said a consulta- tion paper would be mailed to tenants outlining the hmefite of transferring ownership to community trusts, are even prepared. If cuxuro- stances justify it* t® transfer certain crafts free af charge." .

The Scottish Crofters' Union broadly welcomed foe proposals- “We hope all Scot- tish Office crofters’ seriously consider tbe offer ” sail. craft-, ing adviser Fiona Mandeville,

Man jailed for 1 8 years for armed robberies — and killing his father

A MAN who killed his vio- lent, bullying father while he was a teenager and buried foe body in foe* cellar was jailed for 18 years yesterday at the Old Bailey,

Stephen French, aged 32, was given five years for man- slaughter. 12 years for a string of robberies and an ad- ditional 12 months for escap- ing from custody.

. Passing sentence, the Recorder of London, Sir Law- rence Veraey. accepted French's "childhood of stag- gering evil” bat said It did not justify foe solution.

The court was told after the

-kill mg, French, then only 14,

wanted to tell police but his mother discouraged him and made him promise to remain silent while she was alive.

It was not until he was in prisen on remand .for rob- beries that he called police to his cell and described how he foot his father, Peter Leslie, in foe head as he slept, and eventually buried the remains In a house in Forest Gate, east London, where it remained for 17 years.

French denied murdering his 53-year-old father but ad- mitted manslaughter. He also pleaded guilty to several rob-

beries, attempted robberies and escaping from custody in 1992.

Orlando Pownall, prosecut- ing, told the court how French and others tried to dispose of his father's body. He said acid and lime were on to it to dissolve it it when this failed It was cut in half and put in two drums in foe garden and attempts made to burn 1L

It was a childhood of "stag- gering evil" which had af- fected French throughout his adult life, said Rock Tansey QC, defending.

The court heard how Mr Leslie would knock out foe children’s teeth, crack their ribs and point shotguns at their heads and threaten to shoot them.

Once he forced French to eat a meal containing dog food, bleach and sink cleaner. When the boy vomited he was made to eat that too.

In his confession to police, French explained: "All my life he had bullied, hit and abused the family, r just snapped, I didn’t want foe pain and the continual harassment

“He was just one evil per- son.”

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6 WORLD NEWS

TT,„ a..~~nan Tnwdav February 6 1996

After 1 8 years of warfare, Afghans can see little difference between rival Muslim factions, and find life as harsh under their present government as they did under its communist predecessor

John Burns reports

Pedlars . . . Kabul traders use bicycles to shop for scarce goods beyond the siege lines. Many do not make it back across no man's land to the rains among which their fellow citizens live photographs: Sam Faulkner

Kabul’s misery wears a single face

FIVE young Afghans met on a bitterly cold morning last week for the gamble of a lifetime. On bor- rowed bicycles, they planned to cross siege lines south of Kabul, load up with sacks of Dour, cans of petrol and bun- dles of firewood, and be back home by noon.

The threefold price differ- ence between the Kabul ba- zaars and the traders outside the city, they calculated, would give them enough profit to pay the bicycle owners and keep their fam- ilies from the hunger and cold of Kabul for a month.

A few hours later one of them, a former professional boxer called Hamid, was near death in the intensive care unit oT a hospital about a mile behind the front lines. He was not expected to survive.

The villagers who found him said the other four were killed by the machine-gun fire that met them as they rounded a corner in no man's land between the government troops and the besieging forces of the Taliban, the mili- tant Islamic force which pushed to within a mile of Ka- bul's outskirts In the autumn. At least 20 died in such forays last week.

In the dim room where Ha- mid lay semi-conscious, the only sounds were the groan- ing and wheezing of fellow traders and other victims of bombing raids, mines and ar- tillery barrages.

At his bedside his mother. Aysha, said: "The people who

did this are no Muslims. They are the henchmen of Satan, and they will surely suffer in hell."

It is 18 years this spring since Marxist conspirators overthrew the Afghan presi- dent and set off a civil war, seven years next week since the last of the Soviet troops who invaded in December 1979, ostensibly In support of those Marxist rulers, with- drew, bludgeoned by nine years of fighting American- hacked Muslim guerrillas.

In April it will be four years since the puppet communist government the Russians left behind finally collapsed, giv- ing way to a new civil war between rival Muslim groups.

In a country that had 15.5 million people before the com- munist takeover, at least a million have been killed and 2 million displaced within Af- ghanistan. Six million others were driven across the bor- ders into Pakistan and Iran, and less than half of those have returned in the last four years.

Relief agencies estimate that about 2 million more have been permanently dis- abled, physically or mentally.

In the crumbling streets and overcrowded hospital wards there is an angry feel- ing that these are the worst times since the communist takeover. So dispirited is the mood that it is common to hear people say that the "Rus- sian time" — once a synonym for brutality — was not so bad after all.

"Ah. the Russian time —

that was golden, compared to this," said a doctor at foe Karte Seh Hospital, watching orderlies carrying in the body of a 14-year-old boy whose brain had been blown out by a Taliban bombing raid.

In part the gloom is a product of one of the harshest winters in memory: scores go to hospital each morning with frostbite.

In part it is caused by the scarcity of food, made worse than ever this winter by a tightening of the siege by the Muslim guerrillas groups which control the roads from Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, Jalalabad in the east and Kan- dahar hi the sooth, previ- ously never closed for more than a few days at a time.

On Saturday the interna- tional Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) began an emer- gency airlift from Peshawar, 70 minutes across the moun- tains in Pakistan. It plans to fly more than 1,000 tonnes of wheat to Bagram, a former Soviet air field 20 miles north- east of Kabul which is still under government control.

A year ago, when the Tali- ban first readied the gates of Kabul, many in the city saw them as potential liberators, despite their intolerance in Kandahar, where the move- ment was formed and has its headquarters.

There, women were denied the right to work, ordered to wear full veils, and punished if caught outside their homes with men other than their fathers and brothers.

Word of these strictures ap-

*We fought against the country that Ronald Reagan called the evil empire, and it was as a result of our sacrifices that the evil empire collapsed. But afterwardwewere forgotten’

Najibullah Lafraie, foreign minister

peared to have less of an im- pact In Kabul than the Tail- ban's success in overwhelm- ing several of the contending guerrilla groups left over from the Soviet occupation.

But their promise to end the war then make way for a popularly elected government quickly evaporated as they began pounding Kabul with heavy artillery, just like the guerrillas they supplanted.

In May the capital cele- brated when the forces of Ah- mad Shah Massoud, the mili- tary commander who is the power behind President Bur- hanuddin Rabbani’s govern-

ment, struck the Taliban with a lightning offensive and drove them back 30 miles from the capital.

But in September the Tali- ban was back. After capturing the western city of Herat from Ismail Khan, an ally of Gen- eral Massoud, they drove back up the road to Kabul and threatened to overrun the city before Gen Massoud stiffened his defences.

Since then the daily artil- lery barrages have resumed, together with bombing attacks by the Taliban's em- bryonic air force.

Last week two 1,0001b bombs

fell on an area of southern Kar bul bombed to rubble between 1992 and 1995 -Many people still live in the nibble and the bombs killed at least 20 and wounded many more. Hospital emergency rooms were awash withblood.

Thousands more have died, bringing the civilian toll in the capital since the commu- nist collapse In 1992 to at least 25.000, ICRC officials say. The government says the figure is at least 45,000. But even the lower figure is more than the 10,000 to 15,000 said to have died in the 40-month siege of Sarajevo.

Because there is only a ves- tigial international presence here — no UN military force of the kind that tried to limit the conflict in Bosnia, and only skeleton, staffs at the in- ternational relief agencies which distribute food, medical supplies and other aid — the distress seems more acute.

The government blames the carnage on Pakistan, which has backed the Taliban, apparently to win favour with two powerful Pakistani groups: the Islamic militants and Pakistan's own ethnic Pashtuns who are indistin- guishable from the . Afghani Pashtuns who predominate in the Taliban. * i

Pakistan’s role has angered Iran, Russia and India, which have given concerted support in recent months to the Rab- bani government, even though it is led by members of the ethnic Tajik minority, which has held power in Af- ghanistan cmly once before in the last 250 years.

Planes carrying arms, am- munition, spares and other suppplies paid for by Tehe- ran, Moscow and Delhi fly into Bagram every night

Almost as much oppro- brium is directed at the United States, which poured more than $5 billion (£3.4 billion) in cash and arms Into the Muslim guerrilla struggle against the Soviet forces, then virtually turned its back on Afghan affairs when the cold war ended.

The US Agency for Interna- tional Development ended its relief effort in 1994 and Amer-

ican aid channelled through the UN and other organisa- tions has fellen to between $40 million and $60 million a year, the US embassy in Paki- stan estimates. American di- plomacy has been limited to encouraging a UN mediation effort which has never come dose to persuading the con- tending Muslim groups to stop fighting.

Many in Kabul share the view of Mr Rabbani’s foreign minister, Najibullah Lafraie. that the US had a moral res- ponsibility to re-engage in Af- ghanistan's affairs because of its role in the struggle against the Soviet occupation.

“We believed we were fight- ing for the freedom of the whole world, not just for the freedom of Afghanistan.” he said.

“We fought against the country that Ronald Reagan

called the evil empire, and it was as a result of our sacri-

fices that the evil empire col- lapsed. But afterward we were forgotten."

But political arguments seem lost on the poorest people of Kabul, who move through their days with an air of hopelessness that seems to be beyond despair. Stories abound of mothers abandon mg their children in mosques because they lack food.

To many people the distinc- tions between the rival Mus- lim groups have disappeared and the Rabbani government has become virtually indistin- guishable from its communist predecessor. — New York Times.

Mexican army moves in to break oilfield blockade

Phil Gunson in Mexico City

TENSION remained high yesterday in the oilfields □f south-east Mexico, after a series of operations by the army, navy and police at the weekend to begin remov- ing protesters who had block- aded 51 oil wells.

The leader of the protest movement. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the opposi- tion Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), broke off talks with the state-owned oil company Peraex after the army was sent in on Friday. But he was due to resume ne- gotiations yesterday.

The blockade, whose main purpose is to secure compen- sation for peasants in Ta- basco state whose land has been damaged by drilling, was said by some sources to have cost the company more than $ioo.(XW (£260,000) a day. The Tabasco oilfields are

among the most important in Latin America, and this is the second time in less than a year that the PRD has led a blockade of drilling sites.

Mr Ldpez 0 bra dor warned in a speech on Sunday that the government would need "20,000 soldiers to control this movement, because there are 200,000 of us willing to wage a peaceful struggle for our rights”. He said if the ejection of protesters was not halted, a blockade of all the state's oil installations would be considered.

Pemex yesterday responded with full- page advertisements in national newspapers de- tailing nearly $40 million in financial support to Tabasco state last year. In response to corruption allegations, the company claimed virtually all the money was “directly ad- ministered by Pemex", not by state authorities.

Mr Lopez Obrador, how- ever. wants a full-scale audit

Garry says he thinks his lounge is “Orrible. Orrible! There’s a letter stonework at one end. There’s some statuettes of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardft my heroes.” And he falls about laughing again.

of the oil company’s contribu- tions to the state government

The governor of Tabasco, Roberto Madrazo of the Insti- tutional Revolutionary Party (PRD. has attributed the pro- test campaign to Mr L6pez Obrador’s political ambitions.

The PRD leader lost to Mr Madrazo in the 1994 state elec- tions, which the opposition claims were rigged. Later this week, the supreme court is to rule on whether a federal in- vestigation of the Tabasco PRI’s allegedly massive viola- tion of 1994 campaign spend- ing limits should proceed.

The protests, Mr Madrazo said, were aimed at influenc- ing the court's decision and “launching Ldpez Obrador’s campaign for the national leadership of his party”.

Mr Lopez Obrador, a rising radical in the PRD, is a strong contender for the party presi- dency in internal elections due later this year.

Although the PRD leader- ship has expressed solidarity with the Tabasco protest its president, Porfirio Munoz Ledo. is concerned that it could affect the national dia- logue on political reform.

Yesterday's talks were also to consider demands that Pe- mex cut petrol and domestic gas prices in Tabasco, present the National Human Rights Commission with plans to reduce pollution and provide maintenance for pipelines, one of which blew up in 1994.

Mr Lopez Obrador has also demanded the release of six PRD leaders arrested last Fri- day on charges of sabotage.

News in brief

Asian women form ‘fastest growing pool of cheap labour’

LEFT out of Asia’s eco- nomic success story, women from poorer parts of the region have become the world's fastest growing pool of cheap-and often abused mi- grant labour, according to the International Labour Office, writes Andrew Higgins in Hong Kong.

About 1.5 million women, mostly from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, now work abroad.

mostly as maids, nurses and “entertainers", a euphemism fora booming sex industry.

Whereas women accounted for only 15 per cent of the Asian migrant workforce in the 1970s, they now equal or outnumber the number of male migrant workers.

A major reason for the surge was a proliferation of illegal recruitment agencies servicing a growing demand

for female labour in the Gulf

and more prosperous areas of Asia, the ZLO said yesterday. Well-organised smugglers trade increasingly in women.

Among the indignities in- flicted on women working abroad are pregnancy tests every six months. Others are forced into prostitution after migrating on promises of le- gitimate work. Domestic ser- vice and entertainment were rarely covered by labour laws or social security, leaving

many female migrants de- fenceless against abuse, said the ILO report The abuse of women work- ers has become a sensitive po- litical issue across Asia, straining relations between countries that send and those that employ them. -Poorer countries sporadically vow to halt sending citizens overseas but have become too depen- dent on their earnings to real action.

Earthquakes to blame for Old Faithful’s new unpredictability

OLD FAITHFUL isn’t any more. The world’s most famous geyser, in Yellow- stone National Park, is be- coming Irregular, writes tan Katz in New York.

Old Faithful, which used to blast a column of super- heated water 125ft into the air “every hour on the

hour” now erupts about every Tt minutes, and with less predictability than in the 1970s.

Experts blame a series of minor earthquakes in the area which may have Inter- fered with the channels di- recting pressurised hot water np to the silica cone.

They also speculate that Old Faithful may have be- come partially blocked by thousands of Items thrown In by visitors over the years, including under- wear, furniture, beer cans, coins and rifle shells.

Greece snubs US envoy

THE Greek government, feeing public indignation at Washington's role in defus- ing the row with Turkey over a disputed Aegean Island, yes- terday forced the US assistant secretary of state. Richard Holbrooke, to cancel his forthcoming visit, writes Helena Smith in . Athens.

After a marathon cabinet meeting, the prime minister.

Costas Sim mg said: “The programme that Holbrooke proposed does not fit in with the government’s schedule. So the visit is not possible."

He has been attacked for ac- cepting a US-brokered, com- promise over the uninhabited islet Yesterday, tensions re- erupted after a near-collision between a Greek coast guard boat and a Turkish warship.

German police "xenophobic’

Amnesty International said yesterday it had received many reports in the last 10 months of German police beating up detained foreign- ers. It demanded an investigation.

BHaim Steffenhagan, deputy chief of the German police union, conceded there had been isolated instances of police mistreating foreigners but said German police “are clearly not xenophobic” and that Amnesty was exaggerat- ing the problem. — AP.

Korean defection

A South Korean man defected to the communist North yes- terday, Pyongyang said. The North’s official Korea Central News Agency quoted Jo Won- gi, aged 39, as' saying be was disillusioned with' the Seoul government — AP.

Chinese tremors

More than 30Q aftershocks yesterday jolted survivors a f China's worst earthquake in eight years as they huddled in

the freezing streets of Lijiang. Saturday’s quake killed about 250 people. — Reuter.

Hostages at risk

Experts voiced concern yes- terday about the health erf 13 hostages — - including four Britons — held by rebels in Irian Jaya, Indonesia, as they mitered their fifth week in captivity. — Reuter.

Island dispute

Nigerian and Cameroonian troops fought on disputed Is- lands In the Bakassi penin- sula at the weekend and sev- eral were killed on both sides, a Nigerian officer said. He said the Cameroonians

started the fighting but were

pushed back from positions they occupied. — Renter.

Police car racket

Chinese police have seized 105 take police cars which had wreaked havoc on roads in Guangdong province, the Beijing-fended China News Agency said yesterday. Police arrested 49 people in raids an seven centres malting or sell- ing feke police car llfwiro {dates. — Reuter.

Guatemala’s leader attacked as pope arrives

Thousands of cathoi yesterday carpeted i streets of Guatemala C with flower-petal images greet Pope John Paul at t start of his week-long to of Latin America.

The festive atmosphe was marred by what & eminent officials « an attempt to kill Preside Alvaro Arzu on Sunday.

Mr Arzu and his wife I tricia escaped unhurt wh a pickup track appeared try to ram them as th rode horseback outside t capital. Security men st and killed, the track drive The Pope, in a half-ho news conference relayed satellite phone from f chartered jet, spoke of t region's gaping divide 1 tween a rich elite and t poor masses. **T1 Church’s role is to ask i social justice” he said.

He said he would promt equal rights for Ame Indians. Guatemala’s re jorlty Maya Indian popul tion converted Christianity after the Sps Ish conquest.

The Guatemalan faith! rose at dawn to decora the miles of streets that ti Pope was to travel In t armoured popemobile.

The interior minister, R dolfo Mendoza, said wh he called the "assassin tion attempt” on the pre dant would not affect ti pope’s visit. ‘‘We hope won’t be more than an is feted incident" — Reuter.

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The Guardian Tuesday. February fi imr

WORLD NEWS 7

US arid Europe haggle over reconstruction bill

Dispute threatens funds for Bosnia

Lany ElHott in Davos

between States and it funding . J.l billion (£3.3 billion) package to rebuild the Bosnian economy threatens to delay the mas- sive reconstruction effort, it emerged last night

With the World Bank stressing that work on rebuilding infrastructure, schools and hospitals needed to get under way immedi- ately, US and European Union officials admitted they were still haggling over the shares of the bilL

Richard Holbrooke, US as- sistant secretary of state for European and Canadian af- fairs, said in Davos yesterday: ‘It is certainly true that in an era of budgetary constraint all of us are a bit troubled about the amount of aid all of us are going to have to contribute.”

Just over $500 million hac been found to “jump-start” the Bosnian economy, but the World Bank says this will only be enough for the first three months of 1996.

It is putting pressure on do- nor governments — who are expected to find 90 per cent of the $5.1 billion — to settle their differences before a special conference in April, which will discuss a full blue- print for the reconstruction of Bosn ia-Herzegovma.

Officials are working on a fast-track programme for Bos- nia -Herzegovina to join the World Bank in the spring, stressing that implementing the $5.1 billion package would be for cheaper than continued

hnmnnHariaTi aid.

Christine Wallich, acting director of the World Bank's central European division, said last night “The civilian

Britain angry at Bildt delay

Britain is angry that the United States has made no co&bibotion to operation of Carl Bildt, overseeing civilian peace implementation in Bosnia, writes Han Black.

Foreign Office officials said yesterday that the European Union had paid half of the 20 million ecus slated for his budget but had not received the 20- 25 per cent pledged by the US at last December's Lon- don conference.

The complaint follows US criticism of Mr Blldfs pro- gress and a sense that Washington is too focused sed on the military side of the settlement.

effort needs to be as fast as the military effort There is no time to lose."

The Bank believes the do- nor package Is vital to con- vince the people of Bosnia that the peace process is working and to encourage the next stage of the reconstruc- tion process — an influx of private-sector money.

The need for the private sector to move into Bosnia has been one of the main themes of the World Eco- nomic Forum in Davos, and World Bank president Jim Wdfensohn has been lobby- ing hard among the business- men gathered for the week of dismissions.

Ms Wallich said she remained confident thatthe* 1 funding row would eventually be settled. “Donor countries are aware that we need to change the psychology; that Bosnians need to see people with jobs, people who are

healthier, people with water and heat they are also aware that unless these things hap- pen, who knows what will happen at the end of the year [when Naio troops are due to withdraw].”

She said the international community had made a huge humanitarian contribution to Bosnia, but that this now had to be converted Into recon- struction: "Ten dollars spent on seeds saves $100 of food imports.”

Mr Holbrooke will discuss Bosnian funding on his cur- rent tour of eastern, central and western European capi- tals. He said the US was fully committed to the reconstruc- tion effort, but added: “We want the Europeans to con- tribute more and tiny want us to conribute more.’'

One particular problem for the Clinton administration is the difficulty of getting an aid package through the Republi- can-dominated Congress -

The International commu- nity’s High Representative, Carl Bildt, denied . that Europe’s contribution would depend on the amount se- cured from the US. “The US Congress is one of the issues involved, but it is not the only one. Money is available from the European Commission but it may not be all the money that is needed.”

Shrugging off criticism of Ms performance as High Rep- resentative, Mr Bildt said: “This Is a global concern. We are expecting Japan and the Islamic countries to make a fuff contribution."

Ms Wallich said the World Bank was urging the Paris Club of creditor countries to be generous about Bosnia's debts. ‘1 hope they will take a sympathetic view of the ex- ceptional circumstances.”

Davos Notebook, page 11

DISPUTE the United Europe crv "or the Si

Defiant protest . . . Armed Chechens shout anti-Russian slogans from the top of a lorry during a rally on Saturday in Tsotsin-Turt 22 miles south of the Chechen capital Grozny. Russian armoured vehicles advanced on the former presidential palace in Grozny yesterday after more than 1,000 supporters of the rebel Chechen leader Dzokhar Dudayev gathered for the second day to demand the withdrawal of Russian troops

New boss of news agency ‘a threat to freedom’

Poles plan to dig up skeletons

Paul Webster in Paris

FRENCH newspapers ex- pressed concern yesterday at government interference in the appointment of a new chairman for the state-subsi- dised A grace France-Presse (AFP), the world's third-big- gest news agency after Reu- ters and AP.

Liberation said the appoint- ment of Jean Miot, aged 56, chairman of the board at the rightwing Le Figaro news- paper, would harm the credi- bility and independence of an agency often seen as France’s official voice. Liberation claimed AFP*s reputation had been stained by the “disas- trous behaviour" of the prime minister, Alain Juppe, who played an active part in Mr Miot's nomination.

Le Monde pointed out that nine government MPs con- tributed to Le Figaro and recalled that President Jac- ques Chirac had cast doubt on the agency’s independence last year by predicting that Mr Miot would become head of AFP — before the job was available.

The Gaullist-led govern- ment has already intervened in the appointment of state- owned radio and television chiefs, arousing fears that it is determined to take control of the main media outlets to ensure more favourable coverage.

High-level dissatisfaction had been expressed at the way AFP reported allegations of corruption against the prime minister in connection with cut-price rents for coun- cil flats for him and his family. ' .

The journalists trade union, the SDJ, warned AFP’s 1,100 staff to be “vigilant" for possible plans to change the statute guaranteeing its independence.

Mr Miot chairman of the national newspaper federa- tion. was strongly criticised bv other unions, including

the Socialist-led CFDT. which said AFP's independence was being sold

A bill to trace informers is causing alarm, writes Matthew Brzezinski

POLAND, an the heels of the spying scandal which forced the prime minister. Jozef Oleksy, to step down amid allegations that he worked for Russian intelli- gence, has become the latest east European country plan- ning to delve into its past and shake skeletons from its col- lective cupboard.

Few will have forgotten the wave of divorces in East Ger- many when, after 1989, it was disclosed that even spouses had informed on one another to the Stasi, or .the trauma surrounding the former Czech dissident Jan Sevan,

disgraced for allegedly coop- erating with communist secu- rity forces.

But Warsaw’s project to dip into its communist past has a twist The bill's author Is the new president Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former com- munist. Not surprisingly, thousands of Poles are anx- iously looking over their shoulders. But Mr Kwas- niewski's party colleagues do not appear to be losing any sleep over the measure.

“The president's project Is a sword that only cuts one way." said Professor Andrzej Paczkowski. a political scien- tist “It appears primarily to target former dissidents.” It is feared vengeful SB agents may have doctored docu- ments to incriminate dissi- dents as the communist regime fell.

Under the plan, informers who worked for the SB, the communist-era secret police, can be forced out of public office. But former bona fide agents would continue to operate.

Former members of the no- menklatura would also be absolved.

Former communists, who now control parliament and the government, and their al- lies from the old secret police had little to fear. Prof Pacz- kowski said. The screening of people for co-operating with the old secret police without “decormmmisation" had no logic. "It's at best a half measure".

At the headquarters of the Freedom Union, the opposi- tion party that groups former Solidarity activists, conster- nation over the b£Q is run- ning high.

‘It’s not a screening pro- cess," complained Gwidon Wujcik, an MP.- "It serves to oloangp ex-communists.” Mr Wujcik said that his party would be hit hard by the bill if approved by parliament.

Another concern is the au- thenticity of the estimated 3 million files the secret police kept that would form the basis for screening.

The most damaging files were destroyed as the Com- munist regime collapsed. It is thought likely that many files were doctored to incriminate dissidents by bitter SB agents and that innocent Poles may have been added to lists of tor formants by ambitious agents seeking to impress bosses.

Doctored files brought down the government of the anti-communist prime minis- ter, Jan Olszewski, to 1992, when he started screening. In- nocent MPs were named as informants and Mr Olszewski had to resign because of the mistakes.

Ironically, the wan chosen to replace Mr Oleksy, the ax- communist Wlodxfmierx Ci- maszewicz, was named to 1992 as an informant. Under the criteria of the new screen- ing process, however, he would also be absolved erf any wrongdoing.

But even those found guilty of co-operating with the SB

could keep their jobs if supe- riors do not want . to sack

them — a measure that could further protect former com- munists holding topjxBts.

Parliament is to vote on the bill later this month.

Swedish men suffer surge in violence by women

Greg

Mcfvor in Stockholm

den are on ig end of an

ent assaults

i and girl- to fig-

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lodged offi- last year ; domestic r partners, owing toclr > by women Stockholm

Expressen

uant, Mac

»ed 22. has

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friend after allegedly being physically battered while being ejected from the flat the couple shared.

•‘She hit me twice, hard In the face, and spat on me ” he said. The woman, described as “oWei ’and athletic”, then allegedly knocked him over,,^?“ pinned him down. She screamed as lond as she could in my left «■- 1 con- stantly bear a beeping noise in it now.

Mr Eriksson, who claims the injury has impaired his musical career, said not all men had muscles like Ram bo or Arnold Schwar- zenegger, and many felt embarrassed to report vio-

lence against them by women.

“I am not seeking revenge. But I must exer- cise the right that so few Swedish men in our land of equality choose to exer- cise," he said.

Sweden, with almost equal numbers of men and women in work, is renowned for its equality. But researchers say many mate battery victims are too ashamed to report cases.

Mikael Rying, of the National Crime Prevention Board, said: “It is a bit like incest. Once yon start to talk, about it, more and more comes up to the surface.”

Chernobyl effects ‘not properly studied’

Cracked sarcophagus threatens fallout replay

ALMOST ten years after the Chernobyl power station exploded, restric- tions on the sale of tombs from, contaminated British farmland 1,500 miles away are slowly being removed, David Fairhall writes.

But by the time the ban is finally lifted, according to a new study by Adi Roche, di- rector of the The Chernobyl Children’s Project, the con- crete sarcophagus around

the rains may collapse and send up another great plume of radioactivity.

The sarcophagus was never more than a desper- ate expedient. It has rap- idly deteriorated. Holes and fissures, some big enough to drive a car through, now cover an esti- mated 1,200 square yards. The roughly erected con- crete walls are reported to be sinking. The pillars are

in danger of bursting. Yet Ukraine and the European Union cannot raise enough money to build a new con- tainment building.

It may already be too late, Ms Roche writes. “The next Chernobyl will he Chernobyl.”

Meanwhile, by interna- tional standards, only I per cent of Bielarus, which ab- sorbed 70 per cent of the fallout, is uncontaminated.

Davfd Hearst in Tula

Millions of victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster are not get- ting foe compensation due to them because foe Russian gov- ernment cannot afford it.

In the Tulskaya region south of Moscow, one of sev- eral Russian regions affected by the radioactive fallout, vic- tims have not received their monthly remittance since last August

The payments have always been controversial. Some sci- entists believe they are a po- litical gesture rather than a reflection of environmental damage caused and the risk of

living in the affected areas.

Yesterday a leading Rus- sian specialist on radioactive fallout, Leonid Ilyin, said to Moscow that Russia and the international community had lost a historic chance to moni- tor the medical effects of the incident

He said foe people who had suffered most were foe Uqui- datori: military reservists who were sent into the shat- 1

tered reactor to shovel highly radioactive debris from foe roofs and surrounding build- ings. In foe first three critical months about 10,000 of them were used.

“None of these men was registered by name. None was checked on a regular basis, using standardised method- ology. They all went back to their homes and were regis- tered with the local medical authorities."

No one could say with cer- tainty, how much radiation

each man suffered, because the method of determining the levels was so imprecise.

Radiation readings were av- eraged and on this figure foe time men were allowed to work in foe area — ranging from two minutes to the most dangerous to 10 minutes in the less dangerous — was based.

The only way to “recon- struct" each man's dose was an elaborate and expensive test on a sample erf tooth enamel

In 1990 Prof Ilyin, a member of the main committee erf foe International Commission on Radiological Protection dCRP). prepared a national plan to monitor the men who decontaminated reactor unit number four of Chernobyl. It was ruled out on grounds of cost: 500 million roubles.

Prof Ilyin, who published an updated version of his book Chernobyl: Myth and Reality yesterday, said: “The operation on Chernobyl was called The Liquidation of the

Consequences of the Cherno- byl Accident Even foe title was a mistake. You can not liquidate its consequences, you can only weaken them. Nothing similar had ever hap pened before. For 10 days radioactive material was being thrown out into foe atmosphere.”

Eight million people in Rus- sia, Ukraine and Bielarus were declared to have Lived to zones affected by the catastro- phe. But Prof Ilyin said, no real scientific study was con- ducted to see bow they were affected and what by.

He maintains, controver- sially, that many of foe effects noticed in cattle in these regions were caused by foe overuse of fertilisers rather than radioactive fallout.

The liquidators usually meet in their home towns on the anniversary of foe disas- ter. Although the government has frequently promised to pay their invalidity pensions on time, and give them flats, they regard themselves as the forgotten heroes of the disas- ter, many still paying with their lives.

Spanish youth welcomes pin-striped challenger to ‘old, corrupt’ Socialists

Voters too young to remember Franco warm to an uncharismatic rightwing leader, writes Adela Gooch in Madrid

■ M JTHEN Felipe Gonz&le z, Ul Spain’s veteran VW Socialist prime minis- ter, visited Madrid law fac- ulty the students jeered “liar and thief'. When Jose Marla Aznar, leader of the conserva- tive opposition, came to call they gave him a rousing ovation.

The response reflects a shift that will almost certainly pro- pel Mr Aznar’s Popular Party (PF) into office in the general election on March 3. He is making a strong attempt to win an all-out majority, to govern unhampered by Cata- lan and Basque nationalists who would otherwise hold, the balance of power.

The polls give him about 40 per cent of the vote; the Socialists slightly more than SOper cent and the United Left (ID), or former commu- nists, 12 per cent

Spanish youth, foe under- 25s, who include about a mil- lion first time voters, are a critical, possibly decisive, constituency with firm views. Those on the centre-right sup- port foe PP; those on the left, the IU. The Socialists barely get a look in.

•They have nothing new to say,” Maria Martinez, a stu- dent lawyer, aged 20, says. “They're old and corrupt The country needs a real overhaul-"

Both Mr Gonzalez and Mr Aznar are lawyers. The simi-

larities stop there. In his cor duroy -jacket-wear mg youth, Mr Gonzalez, now aged 53, aroused a passionate following. Mr Aznar, aged 42. a sober, pin-stripe-suited for- mer tax inspector, provokes a cautious response. He is woo- ing voters with a tough pre- scription: financial austerity and administrative integrity after 13 years of spendthrift, dishonest Socialist rule.

Despite his self-professed lack of charisma, the young warm to him. Referring to Mr

Gonzalez's vaunted powers of seduction, he says: “Spain has had enough of it.”

“He seems a more decent bloke than Gonzalez. It's time for a change.” says Eva Robles, aged 21, a student at Madrid’s catering and tour- ism college, where training for a job in Spain’s biggest earning industry begins at foe age of 14.

Many PP policies are aimed at the young, including a pro- posal to reduce compulsory military service from nine months to six. Both parties make job creation a priority. Spain has one of the highest general unemployment rates in Europe, at more than 20 per cent The figure i£ double that for the under- 29s.

The Socialists propose shar- ing out foe work available. Mr Aznar promises to acti- vate the job market by gradu- ally cutting taxes, improving

Jose Maria Aznar: Former tax inspector bound for office

professional training and making it easier to hire and sack workers. The young, less concerned than other groups by his claim to be able to do this without cutting welfare spending, approve.

‘T think with Aznar there’ll be more work and the condi- tions will be better." Jaime Martinez, a trainee hotel manager, says.

The PP, presenting itself as a centre party to avoid links with the right’s fascist past, is moderate on social issues — excessively so tor some tastes.

“We should make it much harder to obtain an abortion," says Maria Meiras. a law student in yuppie garb. “You can’t do that,” her friend Santiago objects. “You alienate centrists."

Those aged over 50, who manned the barricades against General Franco and formed the backbone of Socialist support, often ap- pear exasperated by their more moderate descendants. But it is a credit to them that younger Spaniards should take democracy for granted rather than treating It with the circumspection and occa- sional abuse reserved for an unfamiliar toy.

In foe law faculty, a bunch of students in leather and jeans sit cross-legged on foe floor. "Of course, we worry about politics." Raul aged 19, says. “We're lawyers, we think about these issues." Both he and his friend Maria Jose plan to vote for the IU. “They're the real Socialists,"

Maria Jose says. They say the judicial process underway to try a former minister and other members of the admin- istration for alleged links with “death squad” killings of suspected Basque separatists in the mid 1980s should “go ahead to the bitter end".

"Aznar has used the GAL [death squads] to get into power and now wants to close the issue because it is sensi- tive and could embarrass some of his own people." an- other student adds, demand- ing a “real debate on Europe like other countries have. Gonzalez thinks it's the great- est thing ever and doesn't give us a chance to think about it."

At the catering school Mr Aznar has just finished his meet-foe-young visit where he toyed with steak tartare, stirred chicken stew and gin- gerly sipped a Manhattan cocktail

A gaggle of aspiring chefs gather outside foe door. Let's shout “facha. facha ” (fascist, fascist) as he leaves, one suggests.

It is an unfair accusation. Mr Aznar's great achieve- ment has been to silence the remnants of the old national- ist, autocratic right to hl9 ranks and blend them with former Christian Democrats and economic liberals into a democratic, centre-right force.

As he appears, the young dissenters' courage fails. Only one of them dares to shout "Facha." The insult fades, unheard by Mr Aznar and ignored by foe youth’s peers.

TMauardian

Tuesday February 6 1996

Edition Number 46,468

119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER

Fax No. 0171-837 4530

E-mail: letters@guardian.co.uk

The tools for the job

Education reform will inevitably cost money

HOW much joy would there be in foot- ball if correspondents and commenta- . tors permanently focused on the peren- nial strugglers at tbe bottom of division , three: Lincoln City, Darlington, North- ampton? Indeed, how much joy would there be if attention was confined to the losers in the premier league: Coventry, QPR and dare we say it, Manchester j City? Football is joyful because winners get more attention than losers. Televi- sion producers vie with each other for the most attractive teams: Manchester United, Newcastle and perhaps the oc- casional London club. So three cheers for the Chief Inspector’s annual report yesterday for including a list of 200 specially commended schools. Nursery, primary, and secondary schools were all included in this “testament to suc- cess”. They are not just achieving good results but are doing so “in comparison to schools in similar circumstances”. It is not just a leafy suburb list. The inner city is there too.

There is, as usual, a downside also. Ever since an earlier Chief Inspector lifted the curtain in 1988, media cover- age has been dominated by the bad news: the one in three classes which were rated poor or unsatisfactory. This coverage is not just because of the media’s carnivorous appetite. Chil- dren's futures are involved too. Mil- lions of them. This year’s report is not comparable to the late 1980 editions, but the findings have a familiar ring: one in three primary lessons and one in five in the early years of secondary education were rated as unsatisfactory. The gap between the good and the bad remains as wide as ever: “the most successful secondary schools achieve GCSE results twice as good as others in simi- lar socioeconomic circumstances and six times better than those achieved by the least successful in less favoured areas.” Such disparities cannot be ig- nored by policy-makers, the profession

or the public. What the Chief Inspec- tor’s snapshot cannot capture is the process of change. Just as the Plowden reforms in the 1960s were already being introduced into primary schools before the Committee reported, so too the recommendations of the “three wise men” were already beginning to take hold even as their report was released In January, 1992. It is not just the inspectors but researchers who found there had been too big a move away from whole class learning in primary schools. But the research figures quoted by the Chief Inspector yesterday on primary learning settings (eight per cent In groups, 15 per cent in class and 77 per cent on their own) may already be shifting. We will have a better idea next year when the first returns of a new monitoring process on primaries will be available. But even the Chief Inspector acknowledges “an increasing willingness of teachers to review good practice”.

Good schools need more than good teachers. There are two other crucial determinants: leadership and

resources. The importance of head- teachers is now widely recognised with much more attention being paid to their training and the skills which they need. All heads have been given more free- dom and more control over their bud- gets. What remains in dispute is the role of resources. The Education Secre- tary tries to dismiss its importance by pointing to schools which have suc- ceeded despite their financial handi- caps. That is not good enough. Yester- day's report refers to the “disturbing” shortage of books and equipment in some schools and the shortfall in ac- commodation affecting 1,000 secondary schools and 3,000 primaries. Then there is the under-funding, of nursery educa- tion, which is crucial in raising pri- mary standards. Simple maths dictate schools need more pennies and pounds.

There is no quick fix in Bosnia

The political means to peace still need to be worked out

US SECRETARY of State Warren Chris- topher will be back again. His trip to Sarajevo and Belgrade may have been judged a success but the hard part lies ahead. Superficially Mr Christopher’s enterprise can be compared to his medi- ation in the Middle East no one expects that to produce results in a hurry. In former Yugoslavia too, he is being cast as the firm but kindly "father figure". But there is a significant difference. The US has been nudging along a dia- logue between Israel and Syria for the past five years as part of a broader long- term commitment to the region. Wash- ington has only plunged in to the Bal- kan pool over the past year previously it just dipped an inconsistent toe. Worse still, there is an implied cut-off date for effective intervention since the Clinton administration has made no secret of its desire to get out within the year.

Last week a leaked report from the White House, summarising the views of all the US intelligence agencies, took a pessimistic view of the future beyond 1996. It said that the former combatants would continue to share a deep mutual mistrust, seeking to achieve their fun- damental goals while rejecting compro- mise. We would like to believe that this is over-gloomy. The Middle East has shown how the habit of reconciliation can grow over time when there are the minimum conditions for peace. But Bosnia is far less stable while at the same time its own peace process is much less flexible. The Dayton agree-

ment delivered the end — a fine federal structure on paper with any number of relevant - appendices. But it left the political means to be worked out pain- fully on the ground. What has been achieved so far has been almost en- tirely in the military sphere. The rival factional armies have pulled back along nearly one thousand kilometres and have vacated whole regions which are being swapped between the Sarajevo- Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serb “entity.” This achievement should not be belittled and there is a welcome determination of the Nato forces to act decisively. But the political agenda pre- sents a long list of problems ahead. These include investigating war crimes and human rights issues, seeking to check tbe de facto spread of ethnic cleansing as territories are exchanged (let alone reverse its consequences), holding democratic elections within six to nine months, restoring law and order and establishing an effective police force, tackling the crisis presented by hundreds of thousands of displaced per- sons, and rebuilding the devastated in- frastructure of the entire region.

It would be wiser not to lean exclu- sively on Mr Christopher. The Euro- pean contributors to the Nato force quietly realise now that — whatever the imperatives of Mr Clinton's re-election campaign — they cannot pull out so fast from Bosnia. This in turn requires much greater diplomatic effort and more support for Carl Bildt in pursuing the civilian objectives of Dayton.

Just add DNI A to taste

You say tomato, l say genetic nightmare

THE TOMATO was destined to become an early candidate for genetic enginefir- ing. Long before recent events caused it to be dubbed “Frankenstein's plant", it led a Jekyll and Hyde existence. For a start it's a fruit that thinks it is a vegetable: a native of South America yet was first eaten in Britain before finding horticultural perfection in Italy: it is harmless yet was thought during the 19th century to be poison- ous. With a CV like that no wonder it feels confused. There is no doubt also that during the 20th century it has undergone a personality change. It sim- ply doesn’t taste as nice as it did decades ago.

Yesterday Sainsburys and Safeway introduced what Tony Blair might call New Tomato — a puree made from tomatoes genetically modified by block- ing out the action of an enzyme which rots the fruit The initial reaction from a panel of trainee chefs assembled by

I the Press Association was that it was a “hit". But this is only the first step towards what could be the next agricul- tural revolution. Crick and Watson didn’t labour in their laboratories just to produce a modified sauce for ham- burgers. Soon there will be genetically modified bananas, melons and caffeine- free coffee. If they don’t meet consumer resistance then more and more of our food and drink will be affected by j genetic engineering. There are grave potential dangers as the Genetics Forum warned yesterday. But there are also huge opportunities for enrichment Most people will agree with the Con- sumers Association that providing the products are properly tested, there is no reason why they should not be sold — as long as the consumer is given a choice. Who knows, one day they may even find a way for the tomato to have a sex change so it can become the fully fledged vegetable it clearly craves to be.

, f

Letters to the Editor

An economics tutorial

IN LINE with tbe Guard- ian's view that a graduate tax Is “the fairest way of repaying the benefits of uni- versity life”, shouldn’t every- one in the country who ever benefited now make repay- ments (Leader, February 3)?

At one time, a university degree was thought to enable the holder to earn a higher income and therefore pay mere tax. which in itself is a way of repaying society, in addition to the greater contri- bution a graduate is. in prin- ciple. able to make. Isn’t the , underfunding of all services a consequence of Tory dogma: the divine right of the indi- vidual to keep as much of his own money as possible?

L R Armstrong. I

18 Stanley Avenue, Portsmouth P03 KPN.

TBE need for an alterna- .

five to the current univer- sity funding system is undeni- able. However. the Conservative solution ignores the problems of those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It also fails to mention the need for a repay- ment system which must nec- essarily be linked to income. These issues must be tackled if the economy is to retain tal- ented people attracted to tbe “caring” professions which

We do care

WE AGREE with every- 1 thing said about the new | asylum law by the Bishop of 1 Woolwich and others (Let- ters, February 3), except their statement that "we can only assume tbat no political party Is willing to sustain a just system of dealing with refugees because of the un- popularity of their cause at the polls”.

There is no more bitter ex- perience in politics than com- ing under friendly fire for not doing what one has done. Other parties may wish to speak for themselves. For the Liberal Democrats, we op- posed these regulations with passion and a three-line whip in both Houses. If the authors of the letter can show us one act either of commission or of omission by which we may have given the impression that our opposition to these regulations was anything less than total, we would be grateful if they could tell us so that we can correct this wrong impression.

Before doing so, we would be grateful if they could con- sult the Bishop of Ripon, who speaks for the bishops on this issue in the House of Lords, whose admirable contribu- tions have been even worse reported than ours, and, being present throughout the Lords debate, can confirm everything in this letter.

Liz Lynne MP.

David Alton MP.

Eari Russell.

Baroness Williams.

(Liberal Democrats In the House of Commons and House of Lords.)

Houses of Parliament Westminster,

Loudon SW1A 0AA.

Smokescreen

SO Adrian Rogers did not actually watch a blue movie (Labour delight as blue movie row gives star role to Tory. February 5) — lie stayed outside and “worked the lights”. Just as Bill Clin- ton smoked cannabis — “but did not inhale". How long be- fore a politician admits to sleeping with a woman — “but did not insert”?

David Bnckingham- 24 Hill Close,

Pennsylvania,

Exeter E3WGHG.

Please Include a full postal address, even on e-mailed letters, and a telephone number.

| are notoriously badly paid, yet require education to degree leveL Artm Arora.

West Midlands NUS Area Convenor 1994-5.

144 Selly Park Road.

, Selly Park,

Birmingham B23 7LH.

IT IS the new equivalent of the first cuckoo of spring: "Vice-chancellors propose top-up fees”. Each year for about a decade, someone from their august ranks has made such a proposal.

The Committee of Vice- Chancellors and Principals should decide what education system they aspire to. They can continue to squeeze more students into the system with- out extra resources or they can tell the Government that expansion without additional funding has to stop. Or they can choose to abandon the principle of free tuition that has been a cherished hall- mark of British higher educa- tion for so many years.

Tim Walker.

61 Ravenshaw Street,

London NWS. ~

THE most pressing ques- tion that is always asked when hopeful sixth -formers are being shown around uni- versity ifr not “How good is

AWRBsITtor, ITS

, the course?”, bat “How much in debt will I be?” (swiftly fol- lowed by “Where’s the Job Centre?"). With current pro- posals to abolish grants and make loans larger, tiw only people left taking degrees will be those lucky few whose loan will be paid off by mum and dad and people like myself who take every penny avail- able and will think about the consequences later (Tm cur- rently looking at around £6,000 by the time 1 finish).

It appears that the change in demography of students in recent years, from the elite few to the classless many, Is only going to be a brief adven- ture for this country’s institutions.

Ben Wheeler.

Elm Tree Cottage,

The Green, Frampton-on-Sevem, Gloucestershire GL2 7EZ.

I WOULD suggest that those graduates who have suc- cessfully completed at least one year of postgraduate research have their tuition loans written off This is be- cause they will have gener- ally carried out useful research work for little finan- cial return.

Alexander Chahto.

23 Goulden Road.

Manchester M20 4ZE.

i* <su

toiPuut'tr

Yorkshire Water’s leaky logic

A MAN in his seventies tells I piles of snow. Yorkshire me that in years past, Water announces that drought

Mme that in years past, after a heavy snowfall, coun- cil workers would shovel the snow off the streets and cm to lorries, then tip the loads into the River Don.

Ten inches of snow fell on Sheffield: for a week, the pave- ments are covered with toe, and the roads narrowed by

piles of snow. Yorkshire Water announces that drought measures must apply, because reservoir levels are so low. And 20,000 people in Sheffield are jobless. Are these things connected?

Philip M allin er.

289 Abbeydale Road,

Sheffield.

S Yorkshire S7 1FJ.

A brief lesson in Greek philosophy

THE totally avoidable I on CUP to suppress a book. In conundrum described by 1972. after two years’ inten-

I conundrum described by Leonard Doyle (Academic up- roar at banned book, Febru- ary 2) could be a blow to free- dom of expression, but not in Greece. In our country we deeply respect and live by the famous dictum: “1 disapprove of what you say, but I will de- fend to the death your right to say it.”

Freedom of speech is total in Greece, to such an extent that some people (thankfully different ones, at different times and on different issues) never cease complaining it is being abused. There Is argu- ment, often passionate, and refutation, often vehement — but never any violence.

The worst possible fate that could befell a Cambridge Uni- versity'Press book on an an- thropological subject in Greece would be indifference, spiced perhaps with the odd verbal attack against it in the column erf some obscure ex- tremist publication. Intoler- ant voices do erf course exist, as in most countries, but so for they have always dismally foiled to silence anyone. In Greece at least Ellas Gonnarls.

Ambassador.

Greek Embassy, la Holland Peak.

London WU3TP.

IT IS with a sense of grim . irony that I read James Pet- tifer’s letter (February 3) I about Foreign Office pressure :

on CUP to suppress a book. In j 1972, after two years’ in ten- j sive work at GUP’s request I ' completed The Politics of | Medical Manpower, a book dealing with conditions of work to the NHS. The NHS was at the time facing reforms under Sir Keith Joseph: and the nation now knows only too painfully how far that particular philosophy has led. The original reader applauded the manuscript and pronounced it ready for publication.

A second reader was Immediately brought in and, at the Instance of Anthony Wilson (who has now risen to Chief Executive), the book was summarily refused-

Through legal action 1 came to see CUP’S internal file on the book, revealing the second reader as sending the MS to the Department of Health & Social Security, later adding tbe rider “I think tt is important that the author should not know that his book has been read by DHSS because it was read un- officially by a DHSS staff member who should remain anonymous.”

Here was glaring evidence of DHSS interference leading to covert censorship and restriction of academic free- dom. Now history is seem- ingly repeating itself Adrian Tfbbitfcs.

Haytons Bent, Nett Road,

Shrewton. Salisbury,

Wilts SP3 4HB

The royals’ private lives, philosophically speaking

R A ARY Midgley (To do the I elected spec iff call; I VI decent thing February 2) part in the making

I VI decent thing, February 2) is quite right to highlight the tension between ideals and practices as “the elastic that pulls us forward”. For most of us. steadfast adherence to high ethical principles fre- quently has no practical moral bearing: by deciding to leave one’s car at home, or to refuse certain privileges for one’s family, our solitary acts of self-sacrifice serve only to purify our moral consciences.

But senior public figures are in a different league. They have unprecedented power to confer on their private deci- sions a moral value by ex- plaining their ideals to the rest of society and offering their conduct as an example. With unique access to mass means of communications, these people can transform purely symbolic acts of prin- ciple into exetnplary moral behaviour which influences the conduct of others.

Our public figures are therefore hypocritical when they justify their self-inter- ested actions with claims that they are those of. “tens of thousands of parents up and down the country”. .

Finn Bowring. .

5 Ladysmith Avenue,

Sheffield S71SF.

MARY Midgley recognises that Rupert Murdoch's brand of republicanism springs from fear that the present heir to. tbe throne may well prove to be a pro- gressive political influence. Welcome as such benevolent feudalism might have been in the past, it would today be constitutionally dubious and democratically distasteful, and would serve to confuse the real issue: the monarchy is flawed at birth by its ar- chaic hereditary basis and the bogus “Happy Family” straitjacket into which it is forced, placing intolerable strains on the hapless indi- viduals involved. A republi- can president would come into office unencumbered by such self-destructive emo- tional baggage.

Tom Egan.

Jericho, Eglwysw rw, j

Dyfed SA41 3UP.

PACE MARY Midgley, the tabloids are performing a perhaps unwitting service, not in retailing' salacious gos- sip, but in thereby drawing attention to a lavishness of lifestyle and a dependency on vast inherited wealth and on charity from the state, quite out of keeping with the ideals of the state Itself. The crucial factor is whether the head of state is given an overtly polit- ical role. The US and France have presidents who are

A Country Diary

elected specifically to take part in the making of policy. They are politicians. In Hol- land, Scandinavia. Germany. Ireland and the UK. monarchs/ presidents are cho- sen to represent the state on formal occasions. Yet we alone among them keep the trappings of a full-blown aris- tocratic. even feudal, leader, long after political powers have been stripped away. The difference here between form and substance is immense. Dr Midgley's “elastic" is near breaking-point David Hesketh.

Lindisfarne,

Northumberland Road.

Tyne and Wear NE40 3PT.

I THINK I can answer Bel Mooney's question (Letters. February l) about why jour- nalists like Catherine Bennett hate the Prince of Wales so much, and so reflexively. It’s not his chaotic and less-than* perfect personal life, but his open commitments to commu- nities, the environment, molti-cultural continuities, and the reality of soul or spirit

Such things are deeply of- fensive and indeed personally threatening for fire modernist unreligion of secularism, of which the great majority of journalists are devout mem- bers. In extreme cases, this takes the form of loathing anything that does not answer directly to the body’s direct physical and emotional needs, and clinging to a sour creed of rationalism, materi- alism and jejune cynicism. Julie Burchill’s crowning of Catherine Bennett (Letters, February 2), whose every column drips with the vine- gar, perfectly makes my point. But the soul is like any other organ in at least one respect it shrivels from dis- use. Burchill ought to be able to understand that Patrick Curry.

1 Redan Street London W14 0AD.

BEL MOONEY has rightly risen in support of the royal family and of the decent values shared by the majority of the British population. The disagreeable tone of Julie Burchill’s letter exposes the lie that violence is the chief common denominator of humanity in all its real repul- siveness in an age in which (as Yeats put it) "the cere- mony of innocence is drowned". Ours is certainly a less happy society due to the corruption of the cynical media's malevolent influence upon us all.

Hugh Berger.

The National Forum Trust,

34 Kensington Park Gardens, London Wii 2QT.

CHESHIRE: From the road, the path into tbe western woods led down the steep val- ley slope to the river hank and, .once under the trees, I was out of the bitter easterly wind that had persisted for several days. It was still cold but at least I was sheltered from those cutting, icy blasts. A passerby, being walked by : his dog, paused long enough j to tell me how quiet it was. “Everything Is still asleep,” he said, and so it appeared at first glance. Only the sound of running water broke the silence, as the river rushed over and around smooth- edged rocks that had been exposed as the water level dropped in the prolonged drought But life was begin- ning to .stir in the wood: in a secluded corner, hidden away from general view, straight and narrow, grey-green leaves of the wild daffodil had appeared, and were about two Inches tall; still curled over, with tiny green buds brush- ing the soil, and leaves tightly

closed, some stems of dogs mercury had been tempted out into the open. But most noticeable were the few bright yellow hazel catkins that had fully opened. I hadn’t noticed much bird activity until a nuthatch flew into a beech tree close by and started to call. Almost imme- diately. a nearby silver birch was alive with birds — a winter feeding flock on its rounds. Long-tailed tits made up most of the group, chatter- Ff each other as they flit- ted through the branches, the remaindm- being a mixture of great and blue tits and two tiny goldcrests working hard tokeep up with the rest of the watritei them search- mg each nook and cranny, pecking, hovering and hang- JJ&birt never still. Suddenly. ShSLWanUn5- they were SE “0vin® quickly through the trees along the river bank and as I turned to head back road, the wood had 8°be quiet again. •

Af THOMPSON

r-.i

| *

V v •<.

— Guardian Tuesday February 6 1996

COMMENT AND ANALYSIS 9

rtC.

m^v^trr^s ;

Norman

^■Be recent history of 1 the Times is replete P with triumphs (share* pice bingo, becoming a Mi- crosoft freesheet, the entire suitors hip of Gentleman farlieWUson . . hut we

on always squeeze in one

ore. Hats aloft, then, to litor Peter Stothard, who as banned the Oxford mod- T3 historian Norman Stone » a frightul bate. After ending a piece to the Imes, Professor Stone opped up in Henry Porter’s >iece in Thursday’s Gnard-

an. illustrating the decline

m Intellectual standards kith the words: “Look at, tor instance, the way the Times is going," Later that morning, a fax arrived. “It was ftr>m Daniel Johnson — lyes. Paul’s son — at the /Times,” says the Professor.

I He's an old mate, and was very contrite about it, but j he said that Peter Stothard was livid, and had banned me from writing for the paper again." The Professor confesses a sense of shock. “It's pretty staggering. If you fill your pages with loads of stuff a bo lit under- wear, yon can hardly pre- tend it’s the same paper as it was 30 years ago. still. I'll survive." Indeed so, and so will the spiked article, which will appear on this page soon.

FROM the Lynne Pranks PR agency comes news of the most enticing national event since the ill-fated Splash and Flush Week. National Prune Week starts on Febuary 19, and the press release from Rachel begs us to call, “should yon require any facts and figures on Cal- ifornia prunes”. I ring at once, and swiftly learn that Cram August l to Decemeber 31 1995, 4.3 million pounds of Californian prunes were imported. That is Rachel’s only fact so far, but she will search for more. And what are the main events planned for Prune Week? “Basi- cally," says Rachel, “it's a week-long worship of the prune.” No events at all. then? "No. none."

SAY what you will about my old friend Harry Greenway, you must admire his timing. LastFriday, we learned how the cerebral MP for Ea- ling North stopped a road- safety plan wanted by all else because it would have added seconds to the drive to Parliament he prefers to a fatiguing three-minute walk. Also on Friday, mean- while, Harry's regular

column appeared in the Ea- ling Gazette. His topic? “Make this the year roads are sorted1' was the head- line. beneath which that fearless warrior for road improvement wrote of one traffic scheme: “Ealing Council must pull its finger out and get on with the job, before the people ofNorth- olt really rise up in indigna- tion." Could you make it up? r*m by no means con- vinced that you could.

IN yet another political masterstroke, the Dep- uty Prime Minister ad- vises small businesses to de- lay paying their debts as long as possible. The Diary looks forward to Mr Hesel- tine pushing through a refund (backdated to 1994, if you please) for those who paid huge fines for lateness in paying their VAT.

STEVEN Murray

writes from Dumfries with an engaging tale about Prince Philip. This one was not taped off a phonecall in the orthodox manner, but witnessed by a driver in the Diplomatic Protection Branch. Some years ago. Philip was bead- ing for the north of Scotland when his train broke down,

stranding him on a remote

and freezing station plat- form in the early hours. When the driver arrived to collect the Duke, he found a very nervous station man- ager leading him towards his office, muttering: “Step this way, sir, and I shall entertain you until the tram

is fixed." “Why?" said the Duk f. staring Icily at the

mar "are you a f***ing jug- gled ” I bet Kitty Kelley basz t got that one in her wr^ :hed little hook.

■M HE postponement of a ■ railway privatisation ■ because of alleged

tick* t fraud has given rise to a Jew platform an- noui cement. Tralra be-

twet i London and South-

end erecanceU^on Sum ay morning due to tne wro, g kind of thieves on the

Even common sense gets the veto

Commentary

Hugo

Young

Helmut kohl used

to be the man John Major courted for his love. Now he is the man the Tory party loves to hate. In each guise he served the purpose of the mo- ment It’s a commentary, on the utter unreliability of Mr Major’s own European trajec- tory that the ' Chancellor's shift from prophet to demon is a perception he doesn't even begin to resist Kohl is a man 'of our time, but also of another time. He bestrides Europe today, but his idea of Europe was formed the day before yesterday. Since that formation occurred When his country came close to destroying Europe in the worst war in history, it's nei- ther surprising nor ignoble that Kohl's attitude draws on an abundant fear of national, ism. At the weekend, he made a defining speech which urged the scions of modem Europe to remember this, and not to retard the process of Integration. For such appre- !

hensions. he is joyously rebuked by British Conserva- tives as some creature out of the' ark.

These ideas of Kohl's, draw- ing on the last war to make an omen for the next, are cer- tainly unfashionable. They contest the achievement of the very institution into which he’s seeking to breathe new life, the European Union. The historic case for the EU has been precisely that, it made war unthinkable, a con- dition which Talleyrand and Bismarck, Palmerston and even Churcill, could never have conceived of. Yet the German leader asks us to doubt the permanence of this, while Tory Euro-phobes ask us to acclaim it as a construct so durable that it needs no further vigilance.

This contrast is much more than an ironic paradox. Ridi- culing Kohl’s fear of war is a way of evading the real chal- lenge he presents, which con- cerns a larger continent than the west of Europe, and in- vites the partners of the pres- ent EU to consider how they should address the' many na- tionalisms seething on their borders. War between France j and Germany may be an unli- ! kelier prospect even than the ! resurrection of Jean Mozrnet i and Francois Mitterrand j from their tombs. But how | smaller “Europe” handles i Greater Europe Is a question j which should dominate foe

coming Intergovernmental Conference to review the Maastricht Treaty.

It's a question the British Conservative Government has disqualified itself from answering. Not only does Britain have no solution, it has all but abdicated the right to be heard in any forum of constructive argument on the subject So driven by Tory divisions has the Prime Min- ' ister allowed himself to be- come that he seems Incapable of permitting a single particle of foe national interest to count for more thaw the task of pretending they do not exist

Consider bis present | stance. There's quite a lot to be said for his scepticism about economic and mane- tary union, his attitude of wait-and-see. Actually, every- 1 ; one will wait and see. The i British opt-out is not, in foe real world, as unique a quar- antine against infection as the Government pretends. But Britain, under either party, now seems almost cer- tain to withhold sterling until it can be seen whether the new eurocurrency works. Al- though foe more zealous part- ners detest the gloating pessi- mism they hear from London, foe broad British position is one they understand.

But what has accompanied it? Not an effort to be con- structive on other matters, but root-and-branch hostility

to every initiative being floated before foe IGC. Pru- dent statesmanship would have ordained some conspicu- ous displays of belief in foe EU project at other levels. In particular. It would suggest recognising a single proposi- tion of vital interest to any country which is as keen as Britain is on the enlargement of "Europe": that foe EU roust further integrate, or die. In- stead foere has been none of j this. Close scrutiny of minis- : terial attitudes over the past | two years throws up hardly a , single statement about foe EU which is other thaw critical, \ aggressive, disdainful- or cor- rective. The awful stage has been reached where the only minister who breaks the pat- tern. Kenneth Clarice, is being readied for kebabbing.

This treason on common- sense, now assumed to be so normal that perhaps 1 should feel embarrassed to mention it, has many consequences. Take only foe area to which

Ridiculing Kohl’s fear of war is a way of evading the real challenge he presents

Chancellor Kohl so ridicu- lously draws attention. Maas- tricht created the idea of a common foreign and security policy, and wrote into law foe availability of qualified ma- jority voting to conduct it — as long as everyone, in a par- ticular crisis, reached prior agreement to use the process. Very little has happened. The Bosnian disaster proved to be deeper than Europe could handle, and Douglas Hurd's assertion that the use of QMV would have changed nothing may be correct. But Instead of

Going overboard

As Hugo Young (above) condemns Britain’s reaction to Helmut Kohl, Ian Traynor and Martin Kettle explain why he clings to his high-risk strategy

Helmut Kohl’s fondness for in- voking the spectre of Euro- pean hellflre has always raised British estab- lishment hackles. Should Europe spurn his vision of a federal ised political union, the German Chancellor never tires of stressing, foe conti- nent is doomed to return to its ugly historical alter ego — nationalism, protectionism, destructive balance-power politics, resulting in trade wars and perhaps real wars- Last weekend foe hackles rose sharper than ever. Tne angry British response to Kohl’s apocalyptic warnings about the alternatives to European unification has sparked foe worst verbal sparring between London and Bonn since Nicholas Ridley s aDti-German broadside .in 1390. it could get worse before

ft^»n^talks about politi- cal union determining issues Sr war and peace in Europe In

foe decades ahead — as he does at every available oppor- tunity and not just last week- end — the Chancellor means it It is no mere rhetorical ploy. Many see Kohl, and he Increasingly sees hlmselfe as The Last European, the last powerful European statesman currently in a position to push through foe federalist project to foe point where it can no longer be stopped It is his overriding aim, pursued with a mixture of fervour and pragmatism.

hi his 14fo year in power Kohl has no clear-cut succes- sor able to command foe au- thority and prestige that he brings to foe pursuit of Euro- pean policy- The fear that it will turn to a nightmare when he has gone is fed by a pro- found sense of insecurity and the German elite's fear of themselves and their fellow countrymen. There is an ea- gerness, unique in Europe, to . dissolve the national identity and embrace “Europeanness" as if to escape from the bur

dens of being German. The best concrete current exam- ple of this phenomenon is KChl’s undetected commit- ment to trading In the Deutschmark, paramount and most cherished symbol of post-war Germany, in favour of the nebulous and unloved euro. For Kohl, if not for foe rigorous Bundesbank, eco- nomic and monetary union (EMU) is neither primarily an ! economic nor a monetary pro- ■ ject It is essentially a politi- cal scheme, a crucial staging post on the way to political union and a key move in realising the Kohl dream, helping to winke the putative Euro-federation irreversible before he leaves office.

This is one reason why, in foe present heated debate across Europe over EMU and despite the grim economic in- dices, he will not countenance

tampering .either with foe terms or timing of foe single currency. But there are others. Germans are finding it bard to love foe euro. Kohl's passion for it Is unre- quited by two out of three voters. This opposition he blithely blames on “misun- derstandings and mis- perceptions”.

Last week Douglas Hurd,' the former foreign secretary, outlined a host of reasons why the terms and timing for EMU were impracticable and

called on Kohl to take the lead in ordering a delay. Yet for several domestic reasons, it looks extremely unlikely that Boon will follow Hard's ad- vice, at least in public.

The first is that the German economy confronts a deep structural crisis. Kohl's res- ponse is widely viewed as less than adequate. The tabled mark Is already overvalued, hurting foe country's export performance and costing it jobs — more than four million Germans are out of work.

Second, in his commitment to foe euro. Kohl finds him- self between a rock and a hard place. Beyond Germany, foe Maastricht terms for cur- rency convergence are prov- ing too tough for less resilient regimes, meaning that only a

minority of EU members will pass the EMU test But inside Germany, Bundesbank strin- gency and a public reared on sound money may well revolt if Kohl bows to pressure to relax the terms:

Whether Kohl can finesse this twin problem is foe unan- swered question. Despite the war of words between Bonn and London, both sides have more in common than they may realise. A poll on the single currency last week pro- duced virtually identical re- sponses in both countries, with 34 per cent of tradition- ally sceptical Britons in

prompting a response along foe lines Kohl pleads for, the Bosnian history is regarded in British sceptic circles, sup- ported by ministers from foe Foreign Secretary down- wards, with sour compla- cency, as if it proved Euro- pean foreign policy a dangerous irrelevance.

In fact, there is much mate- rial for constructive discus- sion. A common policy requires a sophisticated mix of respect for the large powers with recognition of foe rights of small ones. Whether through vetoes for the Big Five, schemes for enhanced majorities, the re-definition of the meaning of consensus, the exemption of objectors from participating in military action they disagree with, or many other possibilities. imagination can be put to the service of a Europe that counts for something in the making and keeping of a new order. But first foe Kohl anal- ysis has to be taken seriously. It is necessary to grant that momentum towards such a distant goal can be sustained without failing foul of the coarse nationalism which Ttory politicians, even as they denounce Kohl's fear of it, so hideously defend.

It may be too late to hope that the White Paper the Gov- ernment is now preparing, to guard its back before the IGC. will contain any whiff of such elementary large-minded- ness. Seldom has a state paper been so obviously designed as a party manifesto. Chancellor Kohl may have exposed him- self to the charge of slightly apocalyptic grandiloquence, but he is talking about some- thing real, from the high ground of a statesman.

The Conservative Party is a body whose horizons, which once touched Budapest and Warsaw, now reach no fur- ther than the green, bloody benches in foe House beside the Thames.

the revival of DIY

favour, compared with 32 per cent of Germans.

But foe euro is not Kohl’s only problem. Away from the tensions and quarrels over the euro, foe bigger perspective sees Germany acutely 111-at- ease with foe vision of itself as foe principal external agent promoting economic and polit- ical stability in the former communist world cat its east- ern borders. This too is a pro- ject that Kohl wants subsumed within a bigger integrated Europe. In its absence Ger- many fears being left on its own with a problem to which, for geographical reasons alone, it can never be indifferent

AS the Chancellor stressed at the week- end, Germany has its own reasons for being keener on European union than some others. “We have more neighbours than any other country in Europe," Kohl said. “What happens in those countries affects us directly, and vice versa.” In other words, if the EU fails to integrate eastern Europe, Germany will feel forced to go it alone. This irresistibility triggers Ger- many's great postwar neurosis.

Help us not to be ourselves, runs foe troubled subtext of German European policy. Tie us to foe mast like Ulysses, that we be not tempted to pursue our interests. Bind us at this- year’s Inter-Govern- mental Conference with a European common foreign and security policy (CFSP), by majority voting if neces- sary. Yet the irony — and more — is that even Germany will break the bounds when it perceives its national inter- ests at slake. The locus classi- cus here was foe feteful recog- nition of Croatia by Europe at the end of 1991. This was pushed through by Bonn when, had a system of voting such as it now advocates been in force, Germany might have felled to get Its way.

By instinct and inheritance. Germany remains fully signed up fox- the creation of a maxi- malist CFSP. Yet increasingly this too sounds like an old and unachievable agenda, repeated out of duty and for fear of the alternatives. The British certainly believe that they have the alternative. For- eign policy, said Malcolm Rifitind In Munich at a Ger- man-British seminar last weekend, i6 quin lessen tially intergovernmental. Nations can cooperate, but they cannot pretend they do not have in- terests which (m occasion they will assert in defiance of foe majority, especially where military matters were con- cerned. That point was rammed home by the junior defence minister Nicholas Soames, who told the Munich seminar that the IGC must keeps its hands off defence. European policy had to be based on “identity through ca- pability", code for a policy of “no weapons, no vote”.

Listening to British minis- ters it is sometimes easy to forget that more EU nations are at ease with Beam's vision of European policy than with London's. Britain's confi- dent that Germany has got it badly wrong over EMXJ seems to be feeding a more general Schadenfreude here towards Germany’s European policy. The problem is not just that foe Germans may be clinging to an anachronistic policy agenda but that foe British seem oblivious to foe case for putting an alternative stabil- ity in its place. That failure could stimulate precisely foe hellflre which the British pro- fess not to want, but which Kohl and his successors have no alternative but to confront.

Tom Hodgklnson

ARE Peps the new rock to' roll? I only ask be- cause there is a palpa- ble sense in the air that we are moving towards a look- after- yourself economy, and a Personal Equity Plan, boring as it sounds, may be helpful Government fending for uni- versities, already cut back in favour of loans, could be about to end completely. Every- week a newspaper car- ries a feature on the new- insecure economy, on a work- place characterised by short- term contracts and freelanc- ing. Banks are singularly unhelpful We are all soon going to have to face the hell of self-assessment in our tax affairs. We doubt that the Government will have enough cash to pay today's young people their pensions in 30 years. No longer, whether we like it or not can we entrust our work and fi- nancial affairs to a third party.

Across the Atlantic, Repub- lican presidential election candidate Steven Forbes has even proposed the idea of a flat 17 per cent tax rate, an idea that essentially admits to foe notion of practically no government at all — with the attendant devastating effect on support structures such as the welfare state.

The personal-finance indus- try has been quick to cash in, so to speak, on this cultural shift. Its adverts are starting to exploit our fears of less cushioning from government and employer. There are even signs that ads are attempting to reposition the industry, as they say in marketing, or to make money management cool, as the kids might have it Which it is. in a way. Or at least could be. Or perhaps should be.

At the same time, younger people are beginning to real- ise that personal finance may not be as boring as it sounds. “If you’d put £i.ooo in a Pep ten years ago," a friend said the other day, “you'd have three grand by now. In a building society, you’d have £1,500." Which doesn't sound bad. Not that I have a spare grand lying around.

This cultural shift I guess, is what Labour is trying to get at with its "stakeholding" concept. Old lefties bemoan foe idea that the individuals who make up nations are being forced to take on more responsibility for their lives. A nation without a protective state is a brutal nation, they argue. Rather than complain- ing, a better way to view foe future might be to think of

ourselves as dealers. This might sound as if I were de- scribing Britain as a nation of shopkeepers, but the reality is more exciting.

When you start to see your- self as a individual dealer, rather than an employee, a consumer, a union devotee or an acolyte of socialism, the world starts to look a little clearer. You feel a little more powerful. Having been charged £7.50 "management fee" and £35 someth ing-else fee for going overdrawn for a day, I telephoned my bank. A quick rant later and the charges had been refunded. Complain! Discover your rights! Search out the infor- mation that landlords, em- ployers. financial institutions and schools would rather you didn't have!

The reality is that you can do deals with everyone. You can do deals in shops tin more civilised countries, it's known as haggling). You can do deals with your employer less money, more time is one such popular move. After all.

! it might be wise to accept that I we live in a capitalist econo- my. and that this is unlikely to change. Many are going to be left out. Are wc- heading towards a 10 per cent sorted, 90 per cent dazed -and-con- fused society?

Unions were supposed to help us. What has happened to them? Ho w .much differ- ence does it actually make to health workers' quality of life, for example, that their union manages — at vast ex- pense to its members — to negotiate a wage increase of a quarter of one per cent?

THE real value of unions — or some version of unions — should be to provide information and legal advice to its members. By fo- cusing all the efforts on puny wage increases, and by arro- gantly presuming to represent their members’ interests to the management, they do the working people a huge disser- vice. In today's brutal econo- my, a far more helpful service would be to provide advice or negotiation, so that individual members gain foe confidence to do their own deals and con- trol their own lives.

My government doesn't rep- resent what I think about the world: why should I assume that my union should do so? Unions have a political agenda that they tastelessly assume is shared by their members. Not so.

A solution may be non- political small societies or guilds. For a low fee, a small team of people could gamer relevant information on the industry for its members. They could have helplines. A newsletter covering new de- velopments. legal rights, per- sonal reports of battles with clients or employers. Com- bine that with Peps. Tessas, pensions and mortgages and we have the possibility, fun- nily enough, of being free — a nation of dealers, in control of our destinies.

She has no-one to turn to but you. Don’t let her dovm.

. ■ i i: “ Kh-*

vjffwr

5Vjt Uzlku, life 1b harsh. Frail and alone, aha recently had to give up her work berau^e of SSnghealth, With no ta^lytolooX

money. natal cant afford the medicines Bhe needs, or even a proper meal.

VM,, for juat over £E a weak, you can chaa^ all this. By sponsoring someone like Nzixu, you can buy her the bartes of life, such as food, medicine and clothing.

•What.'n more, your money will support other vital jfrqjects to Improve lile Tor entire communittOB.

To find out more, clip the coupon now and poet to: Mra Helen Higgs. Adopt a Granny. Help the Aged, FREEPOST. London 2C1B 1 JY.

Yea. I'm iniorraied in sponsoring an elderly person. PI eat a tad jn® artist I aaa do.

Hr ; Mrs ; Mlea ; Ha

Sand to - Mrs Helen Higgs, Adopt a Granny, Help the Aged. HUSHPOST. London BOIB 1JT

Help the Aged

Adopt a Granny

I TtmSSfim* Aoopta uranny ,

^ fcgUAarod Chartvy St. Sr&TBC ^ ^

10 OBITUARIES

The Guardian Tuesday February 6 1S36

Clive Bruton

Closely observed brains

DR CLIVE Bruton, who has died from a heart attack aged 54. was an eminent neuro- pathologist and one of the first who specialised in the pathology of psychiatric dis- ease. He was also known for his research into boxing head injuries and Creutzfeldt-Ja- cob disease. As curator of the Corse 11 is Collection, which possesses more than 8,000 brains, he was in charge of the largest brain archive in the world.

Bruton was in many respects an archetypal East London boy made good. He never lost touch with his roots and his visits to Rom- ford dog track provided a con- stant source of anecdotes which enlivened many a Neuropathological Society dinner.

After grammar school he trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. London and began to specialise in neuropatho- logy following a stint as a research registrar (1968-70) at Runwell Hospital, Essex, under the tutelage of Profes- sor JAN Co rsell is. They pub-

lished The Pathology Of The Brain in 1968 and the future course of his research career was set. Following a brief period at the Institute of Psy- chiatry, Bruton returned with Professor Corsellis to Run- well Hospital in 1972 as assis- tant neuropathologist. The two embarked on a series of neuropathological studies in- cluding The Aftermath Of Boxing (1973), which resulted in world chajEhplonship box- ing matches being reduced from 15 to 12 rounds. They also started a collection of brain specimens from a wide variety of- neurological and psychiatric disorders.

As a result of their eclecti- cism, diligence and long-term support from the Medical Research Council, Bruton and Corsellis began a series of studies characterised by a willingness to tackle difficult or contentious areas of neuro- pathology. They produced the first comprehensive docu- mentation of the punch-drunk syndrome in boxers, a sem- inal work which underpins recent epidemiological and molecular insights into the relationship between head in-

jury and Alzheimer's disease. They also worked on a thor- ough review of the relation- ships between pathology and prognosis in temporal lobe epilepsy -(which formed the basis of Bruton’s MD and be- came a much quoted Mauds- ley Monograph) and a large Investigation of the neuro- pathological characteristics

of schizophrenia.

Bruton's work on schizo- phrenia exemplifies his char- acteristic willingness to iden- tify and tackle difficult problems. In the early 1970s schizophrenia was viewed as a functional psychiatric dis- order and Its roots were con- sidered to lie in the dark earth of difficult interper- sonal relationships. The phrase "Schizophrenia is the graveyard of neuropatho- logy" aptly summed up the expert point of view.

Undaunted by this consen- sus. and buoyed by his in- sights into the relationships between temporal lobe epi- lepsy, pathology and psycho- ses, Bruton continued to col- lect material from schizophrenic patients and, together with Dr Tim Crow,

investigated the neuropatho- logy of this condition. Their 10-year study, published in 1987. hid a profound effect on the field erf1 psychiatry; for the first time in brain

structure in schizophrenia were documented. Subse- quent studies demonstrated that these changes were likely to be due to an abnor- mality in brain development This demonstration of the or- ganic basis of one of the most enigmatic psychiatric dis- orders laid the foundation for future research in the field and its importance is widely appreciated by researchers worldwide.

THAT he had suc- ceeded where more expensive and com- plex strategies had failed caused Bru- ton much amusement His ability to resist the pressure to conform endeared him to younger colleagues and his deep-seated confidence that his approach would be vindi- cated. coupled with a generos- ity of spirit made him appre- ciated by fledgling biological psychiatrists.

His detailed and systematic study of rare and common psychiatric disorders an- chored him to Runwell for over two decades but after the mid-seventies only on a part- time basis as he book up ftxlt time general practice. Despite his workload he had a Fal- staffian approach to life. He once explained a limp saying he had slipped off his high heels adding that be had been playing the dame at the local pantomime.

Bruton was much In de- mand as a dining partner 3 raconteur. Discussions and disagreements were a con- stant and revolved around the meaning of recent studies and the best approaches to solving particular problems. The role and future of the Corsellis Collection was an ever-pres- ent preoccupation.

This collection namad in honour of its founder has grown to be one of the largest archives of human brain tis- sue in the world and was fac- ing an uncertain future following Professor Corsel- lis’s death in 1994. Despite the ill-health, which led to his retirement from general prac-

tice, Bruton liaised with his local NHS trust and fellow ac- ademics in order to guarantee further funding, thus keeping the archive intact and safe- guarding jobs in the neuro- pathology department. He saw his gift of the archive to future neuropathogiats as one of the crowning achievements of his career. He bad attracted support from the Stanley Foundation in the US and. over the last year had publi- cised the archive .-.and its unique value to the wider community.

Colleague, mentor, scientist and gentleman. Bruton played a huge role to explor- ing and establishing our understanding of the biologi- cal basis erf psychiatric dis- ease. He win be sorely missed by many of his colteagiies, students and friends all over the world. He is survived by his wife Anne, their children Rachel. Tim, Abi and Laura and grandson Jake.

Gareth Roberts

Clive Breton, neuropathologist

Februan^T^ 1&' 1^1‘ Clive Bruton . . . helping to understand psychiatric disease

High point . . . the Seven Dwarfs' Heigh ho sequence for Disney was one of Culhane's early triumphs

Shamus Culhane

Small steps on a fantastic journey

Film animator Sha- mus Culhane, who has died aged 87. ts immor- talised in the history of cartoons for his Heigh ho se- quence m Walt Disney's 1937 classic. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But until the emi of his life he retained a vibrant interest in the sub- ject, enthusing quite recently about state-of-the-art comput- erised animation.

In his autobiography. Talk- ing Animals And Other People (1986) he wrote: “I was a link with the primitive past, before sound, colour or tape. I had been permitted to live kmg enough to see and use the greatest tools for artists that were ever Invented. I am convinced that computer ani- mation wilt produce beautiful works of art — beautiful be- yond our most fantastic dreams."

It must have been some- thing like a fantastic dream when the six-year-old Cul- liano went with his father James, a public transport worker, to see Gertie The Di-

nosaur, made in 1909 by the New York Journal cartoonist Winsor McCay. and the first animated film to be shown as part of a routine cinema pro- gramme. He never forgot this experience.

Culhane had been bom in Massachusetts but moved to Manhattan as a small bay. He began drawing as a child and won awards for his pictures at high school in Harlem. After a visit to the Metropoli- tan Museum of Art he decided to become an artist himself, although after his father left home when Shamus was 16, he had to abandon his studies to support the family.

Nonetheless, he managed to get into the animated film in- dustry' during its infancy. Through his best friend’s brother, Walter Lante, he got a job as an office boy for J R Bray, a newspaper cartoonist who became the first to make animated films distributed regularly to cinemas. In 1925, covering up for an animator too drunk to work, Culhane animated his first scene, a

monkey with a hot toweL His career was to span 62 years.

Altogether he worked for 18 different studios, including his own, and he played an im- portant part in Walt Disney’s early full-length cartoon fea- tures. first came Snow White and her marching dwarfs, which film critics have singled out as the most beau- tifully drawn of that period. Then came Pinocchio (1940), in which Culhane animated the fox and cat At the same time he was also working for Disney’s main rivals, Max and Dave Fleischer, who pro- duced Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Mr Bug Goes To Town (1941). The latter, de- spite a score by Hoagy Carmi- chael and Frank Loesser, was a box-office failure and the brothers split up.

Many cartoon characters familiar today owe their form to Culhane — among fhpm Krazy Kat, Betty Boop, Pop- eye, Disney's Pluto (“the es- sence of dog” as Culhane de- scribed him) and Woody Woodpecker. The bird's ad-

ventures were developed in a series of shorts directed by Culhane in the 1940s for the cartoonist pioneer Walter Lantz, who had helped Cul- hane get his first job.

In a 1994 book. The 50 Greatest Cartoons As Selected By 1,000 Animation Profes- sionals, his 1944 Barber Of Se- ville cartoon was chosen to il- lustrate his humour. In it. Woody the Woodpecker sings Largo A1 Factotum from the Rossini opera with exagger- ated miming to the large pro- portion of vowels to conso- nants in the original. As head of Paramount's cartoons in 1966-67, Culhane produced the Mighty Thor series for televi- sion, and later he co-wrote and produced a seventies' series of animated television specials on Noah's Ark.

Culhane tended to see the world though a cartoonist's eyes, once memorably de- scribing President Richard Nixon's awkward physical style as “three frames out of sync." The artist himself, with his goatee, beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, looked more like a Left Bank bohemian than the product of an Irish- American working class family lucky enough to be young in the early days of a wonderful medium.

winfropipir fw«i

Graham Webb, who is com- piling The Complete Car- toon Catalogue, adds: I cor- responded with Culhane

over a period in the lata 1980s and met him on one occasion in his apartment in New York. He was very kind and helpful to me. I saw no sign of his Irish- American temper although it often erupted over not getting correct credits for his work.

Such was the case with Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle in 1932, when he refused to work for three days and threatened to break his con- tract with Max Fleischer over their rota system of crediting.

According to Culhane, Max stayed in his office most of the time; Culhane wouldn’t have been sorry If Dave Fleischer had stayed there with him. In one letter to me he said: "Some idiot wrote a book. The Ten Best Animation Directors and Dave was listed! I wrote a furious letter which was duly printed. He even got an award for life-time achievement.”

At the age of 78, Culhane closed down his own anima- tion company after 48 years In production in favour of teaching and writing (apart from his autobiography he wrote an instruction man- ual entitled Animation From Script To Screen). He certainly influenced many younger animators.

Shamus Culhane, animator, bom November 12, 1908; died February 2, 1996

Antonio

flamenco

JL NTONIO, who- has

#\ died aged 74, was ^^mucbfhe moat famous K mSpanish dancer of Mq

day. Bun in Seville, Antonio Ruiz Solar (always known by his first name alone) greatly increased the international audience for Spanish dsmm- his performances were un- precedented in artistry as well as in showmanship.

With his cousin Rosario (Fku-enda Perez Padilla), he formed a childhood partner- ship — he was six, she 10 — under the title Los ChavaliDos SeviHanos. They gave their first performance in Lldge in 1928 and remained partners for the next 26 years. Antonio used to boast that he had sup- ported his family from the age of eight The pair finally split up, each to form a separate company, but reunited for big occasions — like seasons' -In London and New York.

Rosario was a fine' dancer, musical, neat, fastidious, deco- ratnrely plump. But beyond question Antonio was the great attraction, in- every sense die dominant partner. This was one of his achieve- ments; to restore male su- premacy to Spanish dance. In the preceding period toe great

nrtaa had all been women — Argentina, Argentinita, Pilar Lopez. The balance in his per- formances with Rosario wax very happy — her solos pro- viding graceful interludes be- tween his bursts of astonish- ing pyrotechnics. In duets, she was a pleasant not too obtru- sive foil to his brilliance.

Their first American tour was in 1940; they came to the Edinburgh Festival in I960 and to London for foe first of many times in 1951. They toured very widely. Many regretted the split with Rosa- rio; the small canvas, just the pair of them, seemed right as a setting for Antonio’s genius, making as it did, next to no demands on. elaborate, and su- perfluous, effects of production.

But his eye in 1952 was set on a company rather than a pas de dfiux, with a repertory that demonstrated his produc- tion skills. He arranged col- ourful anthologies: of: local dances — Ills Galician suite, for instance. And there.- were the keenly awaited, tantalis- ingly infrequent, "spots™ for the master himself, often with his comic solos and always with bis Zapateado (flamen- co's virtuosity of rhythmic

Unprecedented artistry Karsh's portrait of Antonio

Birthdays

Mike Batt, composer, ar- ranger, 4R Rabbi Lionel Bine, broadcaster, 66; Nicholas Brett, editor, Radio Times, 46; NStalie Cole, singer, 46; Les- lie Cruwther, comedian. 63; John Flemming, warden, Wadham College. Oxford, 55; Zsa Zsa Gabor, actress, 77; Tom Harris, ambassador to

Korea. 51; Dr Christopher HSU, historian, 84; Gayle Hun- nientt, actress, 53; Patrick Mcnee, actor, 74; Donald Mitchell, musicologist, 71; De- nis Nordext, scriptwriter, broadcaster. 74; Ronald Reagan, former US president, 85; Jimmy Tarbuck, come- dian. 56; Rip Tom, actor, di- rector, 65; Fred Trueman, cricketer, 65; TSerQi Water- house, playwright; 67.

stamping) as the show's

rlliwnc.

He began, also, to try his hand at veritable choreogra- phy, as distinct from ‘'arrang- ing" dances, adapting the tra- ditional, relatively limited language of Spanish classi- cism to the sort of dramatic purposes attained by classical ballet But it never quite winked. He was no dab hand at actually inventing move- ments and anyway it was be- yond the scope erf Spanish dance. His versions of the de Fftlla ballets. Love 'Hie Magi- cian and The Three Cornered Hat "were jejune. (The only really good Spanish ballet remains Leonide Massine's Three Cornered Hat made for Diaghilev).

Antonio’s company, none- theless, was a big interna- tional success. Ha was a mag- nificent and versatile tpnhnirifln of his country’s many forms of dance. Above all. he had the looks and the personality — handsome, fiery, buoyant charming.

JmnKannedir

Antonio Ruiz Soler, Spanish dan- cer, bom November 4. 1921; died February 5. 1996

Death Notices

a ROOKIE, Esthar Wynne Breakevens, Trade Union tat. dtsd 22.96 aged 94. altar a long bUtkt, valiantly taught. Sha mod oa she had Ihwd. Funeral Amoy Vale Grerrw- toram Thursday LZM 130pm. All trtarata welcome No flowers, but donations Instead DtaBM 10 ThnKy Hoapiee. Ctapham or Mac- Millan Nuims.

NBJBURO. incur E "Toby, unamety an January 28th Funeral on B February at SL Uarylebone Crematorium. No (lowers Donations to The British Dtabnttc Associa- tion do Cooksey A Son 190 Fortta Green Hood. London Nip 3DU 'Instant and pre- sent thou at every place".

OKBJ- Oow, Peacefully el home. February 2nd 1906. Jenny aged SB years. The dearly loved wife ot the lets Alec OtteU, mush laved mother at Carolyn and devoted staler ot the later Ronald Glow. Cramadan Private- A aanries o I thanksgiving vrill be Jwld at the Hale Chapel. Chaps) Lane, Hale Barns on Saturday February I7ih at i-Ottam H rtastred donations lor The At!- htamer's Dtaease Society may be sent to Messrs Ashton Brookes Funeral Directum W ttomall enquiries should be made. $52"? Fust AJJrtngtnievi, Cheshire WAU ffla Tot 0161 928 7816.

WMLKER, MadeMne (nee Chrisdel. On TJurmday let 1966, trite ot the lata Darin Paterson WalUr. beloved mother ot Fat

and Amanda. Funeral Service at Urn'a London (#1.

Church, let ., on Friday Btti

Or donsDOfts pi

at 12 noon Flowtre!

wr»x*,,n 'ro-

in Memoriam

puWjBHL Reg would have been ; Loved and kinged tar ahrays.

OHCHAHD, Ben. Died February i

Jackdaw

Overdue

IN 1835. Guglielmo Libri was exiled [from Italy] and moved to France. There a brilliant career opened before him. In 1853, he was naturalised a Frenchman and elected a member of the Institut de France. He was appointed As- sistant Professor in the Sor- bonne in 1834 tfuil Professor in 1840). Chevalier of the L^ yion d'Honneur in 1837, secre- tary of a commission for the publication ofa general cata- logue of manuscripts in French libraries in 1842 and Professor in the College de France in the following year . . . Ah this time. Libri had been buying, selling and

stealing books. There was an early incident in Italy. He had been made librarian of the Florentine Accademia del GeoreoCli In 1825 but resigned abruptly a year later. Three hundred vol- umes were found to be miss- ing. The scandal was hushed up b; his family. In France . . . as secretary of the commis- sion to publish ca talogues of manuscripts, he was given privileged access to many li- braries. He worked unsuper- vised among the shelves, stayed after hours and had his meals brought In. He would arrive wrapped in a capacious Italian cloak, and warned the terrified librari- ans that he carried a stiletto for protection against the Carbonari. The Biblioteque de l'Observatoire allowed him to take home numerous files for study. Letters of Flamsteed and Gassendi, and 455 items from the correspon- dence of Hevelius. were not returned. The aged librarian of Carpentras was persuaded to let Libri exchange one of GroLier’s copies of CastigLio* ne's n Cortegiano and an uncut copy of the Aldine Theo-

critus of 1495 for ordinary copies of most editions.

In 1847. after an unsuccess- ful approach to the British Museum. Libri sold his collec- tion of 1,800 manuscripts to Bertram, fourth Earl ofAsh- bumham, for £8,000. The prize piece was a seventh-century Pentateuch with 49 minia- tures, stolon from Tours. In June oftbe same year, a major sale of "la Biblioteque de M. L****” took place in Paris. It included a dazzling series of rare 16th century works of Italian literature— 61 had been stolen from the Bibliote- que Mazarine...

Meanwhile, rumours of Libri's fraudulent activities had begun to circulate. Bouc- iy, the ProcureurduRoi, made inquiries and. submit- ted, a report . . . When the July Monarchy fell. [Ubril was warned that the Boudy report was about to be pub- lished. He spent the night burning papers and packing 25,000 volumes for dispatch to England, where he himself fled the next day.

A/uhony Hobson follows the trail qf a "Scientist. patriot, scholar, journalist andth itf ”

in his Times Literary Supple- ment review o/The Life And Times Qf Gughelmo Libri (Hil- uersum), by P Alessandro. Mas- ctoni Ruju and Marco MosterL

News gloss

• THE MAN WHO C^AVE

• “MY MOTHER PAYS TO LOOK YOUNGER THAN ME”

• WHO DOES YODR PARTNER REALLY WANT TO SLEEP WITH?

• WOMEN WHO ELIMINATE THEIR EX-LOVERS

• “A PROSTITUTE STOLE MY CHILD'’

• THE FUTURE FOR YOUR ■BODY

Coder lines from the Pebruary issue of Marie Claire, “77te magazine Jbr women of the world".

Memory lapse

WHEN I had everything in the world open to me ... I made the same painting over and over and over. When I could invent any shape, I made foe same shapes over and over. When I could use any colour, I would use the

same colour combinations over and over. . . [As a child] I had really severe learning disabilities so I wasn’t going to be able to take foe normal route. I grew up so dyslexic I couldn't memorise anything, including faces — which is rather funny .Somebody that I’ve just seen on foe street is as familiar to me as some- ■ body I used to live with. I have to keep reinforcing and seeing the face over and over and overatregular intervals to keep it in my brain. You can see where this could be

problematic but visually in- forming. A strange ramifica- tion of this imparity is that it is much easier for me to remember something that is flat than something which is three-dimensional. If you move your head a quarter of an inch, rfs a whole new image and 1 have to learn the image all over again ... but if it’s flat I move my head and It doesn't really change. So I think that I was driven to work on something that wasn't going to change. 1 guess that's why 1 was prob- ably more interested in scan- ning the faces of those 1 know

and Invp anri fmwmttting ■ them to memory than I was probably in anything else. The portrait painter Chuck Close interviewed in Cover magazine. America 's * Voder ■- ground national”.

Uplifting

HISTORY does not record whether Confucius ever con- sidered the WonderBra. But today there’s bad news from

Recognition . Cover

foe world ofliogerie for Asian leaders who hope that Confucianism’s stress on pro- priety will ward off foe West’s obsession with s ex. Asia’s growing ciwg? of affluent ur- ban woman is eager to flaunt its sexuality. And that has created a boom market for the raciest of G-strings and skimpy push-up haras. The hottest market of alb stuffy Singapore . . . "it's nanny land, with the government al- ways toiling you what to do,” says Madelyn Lip, who pro- motes underwear in the region. ‘*60(11167 can’t tell you what to do underneath. Under it all, women are rebel- lious" . . .WonderBra, the brand that popularised the super push-up brassiere, next month will launch a special product line sized for the slim Asian body. “There's a strong desire to be sexy,” says Dorothy Lao. a Hong Kong accountant "People

want to many a good hus- band, and a push-up bra is part of the package to achieve thatfoal.’’

This is still a limited mar- ket Most Asian women remain shy about their

bodies. In Seoul, according to a study by Japanese under- wear manufacturer WacoaL, 82 per cent of women sleep - wifo underpants and a bra under their nighties. Bolad- vertising evidently can erode such conservatism. The study also suggests a direct rahHnn. ship between the amomr of racy ads and thedissatfaho. tion that can lead womer .to fry to improve on nature1 In Tokyo, where 84 per cenfof

women said they are imiappy

with their bodies, 48 percent

of those polled said they nvn

more than four girdles. L Beijing, exposed to Western advertising for only a few years, 74 per cent of the .

women said they’re hapty with (heir bodies. j

Dorlnda Elliott looks at Asia 's discreet objects of desire fir Newsweek.

Jackdaw wants your jemis. E-mail

Jackt^@guardUuuo.u:; fax 017X-713 4366: Jackdao The Guardian, 119FctrrUgdon Road. London EClR 3ER

Dan Glaister

Tuesday February 6 1996

Rivals try to squash Orange, page 12

Chunks eat into Dalgety profit, page 12

Financial Editor: Alex Brummer Telephone: 0171-239-9610 Fax: 0171-833-4456

Finance Guardian

Land’s end for Shell North Sea oil platform

SHELL announced yes- terday that it would dis- mantle tts t*wi^i BK gas platform on land rather than dispose of the installa- tion in the North Sea. writes Chris Barrie.

The plans — the first ap- proved by the Government since the Brent Spar con- troversy — involve par- tially dismantling and ship ping the 6,000-tonne steel platform ashore from its site 45 miles east of Lowestoft.

Shell said the Leman plat- : form was simpler to decom- mission, smaller, and in 1 shallower water than Brent Spar. It will put the £10 million contract out to tender shortly, with five UK firms front-runners to win the business. Green- peace welcomed the deci- sion to opt for onshore disposal.

Energy minister Tim Eg- gar said the Government would continue to review applications for decommis- sioning case by case.

PHOTOGRAPH: ANDREW LEATHAM

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Fokker rescue link hits BAe

Mark Milnmr

European Business EcBtor

SHARES in British Aerospace fell sharply yesterday after it emerged as a possible rescuer for ailing Dutch plane maker Fokker.

BAe confirmed that it had held talks alongside its part- ners in the regional jet sales and marketing venture Aero International (Regional).

It is unclear, however, whether the AIR partners, which also include France's Aerospatiale and Italy's Alenia, are among the five frontrunners with which Fok- ker says it is in serious talks about a rescue bid with its ad- ministrators.

News of a possible tie-up be- tween BAe and Fokker, which had to seek protection from Its creditors last month, was enough to send the British company’s share price down 24p to 675p.

BAe was giving little away yesterday. A spokesman for

tiie group said: “We are moni- toring foe situation. There have been contacts. We need to know what is going on in the regional aircraft market” Aerospatiale was equally non-committal. A spokes- woman said: “The partners in AIR have an interest in the Fokker situation. We are studying it hot no decisions have been made yet"

A Fokker spokesman would confirm only that foe South Korean company. Samsung, was one of foe five ^’serious” contenders. He refused to comment on whether or not BAe or Aerospatiale were among the leading group.-

British Airways profit rise fails to cheer City as weather and French politics bite

However, Fokker is clearly k«*gm to keep the company together as a tingle aircraft manufacturing entity rather than seeing itself broken up into what one executive de- scribed yesterday as “bits and pieces". That might prove dif- ficult if BAe and Aerospa- tiale, which maicp rival prod- ucts. were to become involved in a rescue operation.

Another possible suitor for Fokker is foe Canadian com- pany Bombardier, the owner of Belfast-based Short Brothers, where hundreds of jobs could be lost if Fokker were to fold.

Shorts has already issued

BRITISH Airways an- nounced a 30 per cent rise in pre-tax profits for foe last three months of 1995 yester- day but failed to meet City ex- pectations, partly because of advene conditions in Janu- ary, writes Ian King.

Despite an insistence by foe chairman Mr P-hItti Marshall,

that prospects remained “favourable", analysts

formal notices of possible job losses covering up to U500 people and yesterday Baron- ess Denton, from the North- ern Ireland Office, held talks over the situation at Fokker with Dutch officials in foe Hague.

Bombardier said yesterday it had agreed to hold talks with Fokker, but it did not make clear whether foe nego- tiations were confined to Short's role as a supplier to the Dutch group or whether the Canadian group was in- terested in Fokker itself.

Fokker’s future was thrown into the balance last month when its controlling share-

marked down their foil-year profit forecasts and foe share price fell 19p to 502p. BA said passenger figures and for- ward bookings made in Janu- ary were disappointing due to worse-than-usual weather.

Industrial unrest in France, the government shut-down in foe United States and "nega- tive reaction” to French nu- clear tests in foe Pacific had

holder, Daimler-Benz, refused to provide further financial support for the lossmaking Dutch company.

That forced Fokker to apply to the courts for protection from its creditors and the Dutch government, which remains a shareholder, threw the company a £146 million lifeline through a combina- tion of loans and advance pay- ments on aircraft orders which are providing foe com- ! party with the funds to keep production running for sev- eral weeks.

Fokker chairman Ben van Schaik said yesterday that he was more optimistic about

also contributed to January’s poor performance, with Japa- nese tourist traffic to Europe particularly badly hit

Overall, the figures took nine-month profits to a record £534 million, up 24.5 per cent while BA also broke records for passengers carried and percentage of seats sold.

Sir Colin said: "Business prospects remain encourag-

Workers of world warn BAT covered up nicotine business of backlash danger, says ex-employee

Larry EHott in Davos

Leaders of the world’s trade unions pledged yesterday to fight any at- tempts to drive down work- ers’ living standards and warned business of an immi- nent public backlash against foe unemployment and in- equality caused by globalisa- tion.

Stressing the need to exam- ine foe social impact of eco- nomic liberalisation, unions made it clear that they rejected calls by Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer and Bank of France president Jean-Claude Trichet for greater labour market flexi- bility In Europe as onesided.

“We anticipate a very diffi- cult time if an attempt Is made to reduce the living standards of employees,” said Philip Jennings, general sec- retary of FTET, which repre-

sents 450 unions from 120 countries.

Mr Jennings was leading a group of union leaders to foe Work! Economic Forum in Davos in order to lobby busi- nessmen and politicians about the plight cf foe 750 mil- lion people around the world who were unemployed or underemployed.

"You can’t leave foe desti- nies of working people in the hands of a few unelected cen- tral bankers. I fear there will be a backlash if people are go- ing to get lower wages and higher unemployment as part of this process."

Mr Jennings added that foe reaction against "social Dar- winism" could take the form of Increased nationalism, xe- nophobia or greater protec- tionism.

The growing strength of un- accountable multinational companies bad left a vacuum is governance, and it was

Money lips

vital that minimum stan- dards were used as foe basis of a relationship between em- ployers and workers.

He added that the stogie currency project posed a poss- ible flrirHfinrmT threat to Euro- pean workers. “If you take away foe ability of a counfry to make an external move- ment to foeir currency to im- prove competitiveness that will mean wage earners have to take the flak. There has to be a social project to rim alongside monetary union."

Bill Jordan, general secre- tary of tile International Con- federation of Free Trade Unions, said foe 127 million members cf his organisation were being affected by the massive problems of “world poverty, unemployment and social exclusion” in a way that was unacceptable.

Both Mr Jordan and Mr Jennings said organised labour had proved its willing- ness to promote employment, effing the part played by Ger- man unions in the recent job creation package.

Hark Tran to New York and Pauline Springett

BAT industries, the tobacco and financial services conglomerate, has been accused by a former employee on prime-time US television of covering up the addictive nature of nicotine.

The allegation, heard by millions of viewers, is the lat- est assault on foe credibility of the tobacco industry. It was made cm the CBS programme 60 Minutes by Jeffrey Wi- gand, former research direc- tor at the BAT subsidiary Brown & Williamson.

Michael Moore, an attor- ney-general for Mississippi told foe programme that Mr Wigan d was planning to tes- tify in a lawsuit that the com- pany knew for decades that tobacco was addictive. Mr Wi- gand is the most important tobacco official to have turned against the industry.

A BAT spokesman said the

lawsuit was in Its early stages. “We don't expect it to

succeed,” he said. He added that BAT was suing Mr Wi- 1 gaud In a separate lawsuit al- ; leging “fraud, theft and breach of contract when we I believe foe full story about him will emerge. We reckon that he will not turn out to be a credible witness and we look forward to cross-examin- ing him.”

CBS backed down three months ago from airing the Wigand interview amid fears of a lawsuit Mr Wigand al- leges that research on a safer cigarette was dropped for fear It would clearly expose every other product as unsafe.

Mr Wigand also said that B&W executives bad long been aware that nicotine was addictive and that Thomas San defur, chairman and chief executive officer, perjured himself in congressional testi- 1 many when he denied this.

Mr Wigand, who said he had received death threats, also alleged that B&W did not

take enough care over the use

of additives, as in foe case of coixmarin, a carcinogenic and

an ingredient used to rat poi- son. Coumarin was used in pipe tobacco because remov- ing it “would hurt sales", Mr Wigand said. B&W has since removed coumarin.

Mississippi's lawsuit is seeking to force tobacco com- panies to pay for the cost of smoking-related Issues. Mr Moore said that Mr Wigand’s testimony was “going to be devastating to the tobacco in- dustry. They [tobacco execu- tives] have perpetrated foe biggest fraud to the American public in history. They have lied for years and years and made a profit-”

The states of Minnesota and Florida are also suing foe In- dustry for reimbursements, and Mr Wigand is the key wit- ness in all three state suits.

Mr Wigand. who has a doc- torate in biochemistry and endocrinology, was head of B&W research from January 1989 until March 1993.

60 Minutes included denials by the company as well as de- tails of a B&W campaign to portray Mr Wigand as a liar.

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Gold finger points to ‘rogue’

Dan Atkinson and Jan Rocha in Sao Paolo

Rumours that a Nick Lees on- style dealer, based in Brazil, has been responsible for a surge In gold prices have gained credence among in- ternational decision-mak- ers at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Suggestions that a cen- tral-bank trader to South America has found himself short of bullion have been around since before Christ- mas, but recent events have added force to the gossip.

: In New York, bullion dealers are reported to have abandoned their habit

of secrecy and are compar- ing notes, convinced the official figures for gold dealings do not add up.

One London broker said: “The whole thing remains shrouded in secrecy and is either a potential fireball or a damp squib."

Joubert Furtado. a senior Brazilian central bank offi- cial, said: “The rumours are laughable. We are not preoccupied by the recent price movements.**

Until now, the rumour that a Latin American cen- tral hank — finding itself short of gold to fill specula- tive positions — has been behind the price surge from some 8340 (£226) a Troy ounce before Christmas to

$414.5 last night have tended to be dismissed by market professionals.

But market talk has con- tinued, and the announce- ment on Thursday that Bra- zil's state-owned company. Vale do Rio Doce, bad dis- j covered what would be the I biggest gold mine in South i America, may fuel gossip.

■Normally this would be seen as simple goods news, but the timing of the an- nouncement will cause sus- picion should Banco Cen- tral, the reserve bank, or state-owned Banco do Bra- sil, prove to be short of bullion. The discovery would have the welcome ef- fect of holding down world prices and reassuring cred-

itors that Brazil is more than able to pay gold debts.

The consensus in the Lon- don market last night sug- gested the “rogue trader" story to be, at most, a wild exaggeration.

We’ re ready for a Ugandan solution

Edited by Mark Mifner

LAST week the govern- ment in the Seychelles announced a novel way to boost inward investment. Anybody prepared to stash away S10 million (£6.5 mil- lion) on the sun-kissed island In the Indian Ocean would be exempt from prosecution, no questions asked.

Predictably, this has led to uproar to the world business community, and rightly so. But it illustrates what most cf foe delegates at the World Economic Forum know only too well — that globalisation has spawned an orgy of cor- ruption.

On one panel at Davos, a Brazilian judge and a Russian businessman swapped stories of assassination bids, while tiie joke among Swiss police- men is that criminals no longer rob banks, they own them. They point out that the slopes of St Moritz are now the playground of the Russian mafia rather than minor Brit- ish royals.

Chairing a panel on corrup- tion, Jules Kroll chairman of the eponymous personal secu- rity firm, said tt was all very well having consciousness raising sessions, but direct action was now needed.

He noted that the desire for greater co-operation across borders was growing, and that rules were wildly differ- ent This may be more diffi- cult than he thinks, since it is not only small islands but banks in developed countries that are prepared to turn a blind eye to illegality in these times of cut-throat competition.

Nor is it easy to the current climate to .see his solution to the massive Russian problem — do business but not with foe mafia — as anything more t than wishful thinking.

But two things could be done. First, far more resources should be poured into policing in an attempt at a co-ordinated clean-up before it is too late. The American system, where a share of foe proceeds from anti-drug smuggling operations go straight to foe enforcement wing rather than into govern- ment coffers, should be more widespread. Second, the West should seize the offer from Uganda that debt forgiveness should be linked to a 20-year audit of the government books. In a world where in- centive structures are every- thing. that would be foe best possible reason to stay clean.

the future of the company than he had been a week ago. "One week ago we were not in talks and we didn't even have the bridge financing and that is an important hurdle." he said.

• Daimler-Benz chairman Juergen Schrempp said yes- terday that Airbus Industrie, the big jet consortium, made up of Daimler-Benz Aero- space. BAe, Aerospatiale and Casa, needs a "common" identity and a "management with bottom-line responsi- bility”. The current struc- ture, he said, was one in which "managers have no role".

ing — a record profit for foe year is anticipated and we ex- pect to continue our pro- gramme of performance improvements.”

City analysts were less opti- mistic, however, warning that BA’s costs had risen sharply in recent weeks.

But Mike Powell of NatWest Securities said BA’s problems were largely short-term.

Fokker fallout

face of it the latter role looks the more attractive. Cer- tainly, if Fokker were to fold, it would remove a formidable competitor from the field. By contrast, foe news from Sin- gapore yesterday that BAe might get Involved in the rescue operation was enough to cast a cloud over the share price.

Yet BAe may have a vested interest in a Fokker survival flight plan for both tactical and strategic reasons.

At the tactical level, a Fok- ker collapse would also knock the bottom out of the regional jet market That might seem odd. The removal of a manu- facturer does not normally de- press the market for foe sort of products It supplied. Many regional jetliners, however, are not bought outright but are operated on short leases. If Fokker went under its suc- cessor body would have to renew such leases on fire sale terms, with a consequent im- pact on the rest of the market

At foe strategic level the calculations are more com- plex, but the likelihood must be that Fokker will survive in some form. It looks to have no lack of suitors — on the com- pany's own count five rated as serious and a rather larger number as interested parties — and, assuming a deal is done, it will be in BAe's inter- est that an eventual Fokker rescuer will not prove to be a stumbling block towards a necessary restructuring among Europe's regional jet- liner manufacturers.

The future’s digital

■1 HERE is an element of

I catch-up in yesterday's

I decision by Cellnet to cut the price cf calls. Traditional rival Vodafone has already announced its own package and both are trying to close the gap on Orange. The ques- tion for Cellnet and Vodafone is how far they can go along tiie price-cutting road. Both face a technical constraint Both have big analogue net- works which take up more space an the radio spectrum than foe digital alternative. Given that all mobile tele- phone companies have a lim- ited spectrum allotment, their scope for increasing custom- ers is consequently curtailed compared with foeir smaller but all-digital rivals, Orange and Mercury One-2-One. A limit on expansion of foe cus- tomer base implies a limit on foe scope for price cuts.

The trick that Vodafone and Cellnet have to pull off is to woo existing customers away from the analogue sys- tem to the technologically more advanced digital sys- tem, even though equipment for the latter is more expen- sive. Both Cellnet and Voda- phone already have digital systems, but to achieve a sig- nificant switch to the balance between analogue and digital users in favour of the latter would mean scaling back the analogue network long before it had reached the end of its useful life. Timing will be everything.

Still they can always ask Prince Philip to help with the advertising. One of digital's greatest strengths la the secu- rity it offers from electronic eavesdroppers.

AS FOKKER plays the sick man of Europe's aircraft industry, the question is whether. If British Aerospace is to play a role in the unfolding crisis, it should be that of the Dutch compa- ny's doctor or its heir. On the

850 jobs go as Amstrad and Scottish Widows wield axe

Pauline Springett and Tony M*y

MORE than 800 job losses were announced last night by insurer Scottish Widows and computer group Amstrad.

Scottish Widows is axing 700 jobs over the next year as part of a streamlining and centralisation operation. A spokesman said the move was triggered by the increasing competitiveness of the life as- surance industry. Between 500 and 600 jobs will go at the company’s Edinburgh head office, where there are pres- ently H200 staff.

Scottish Widows said it hoped job losses could be achieved by retirement, rou- tine departures and a volun- tary redundancy scheme. The company also plans to close its processing offices in Birmingham, Bristol Croy-

TOUniST RATES — SANK SELLS~

don, Leeds, London and Man- chester with the compulsory loss of 100 jobs. The work will be transferred to Edinburgh.

MSF, the union for skilled Office workers, said it was con- cerned that Scotland could lose a huge number of jobs in financial services. It win be seeking an urgent meeting with Michael Forsyth, the Sec-' retary of State for Scotland.

Meanwhile, Amstrad is to ■ cut 150 jobs in Britain and some staff at its European op- erations as part of a reorgani- sation of its unprofitable con- sumer electronics division.

Alan Sugar, chairman of the group, said: “The market trend in consumer electronics means only lean organisa- tions who concentrate on foeir core skills will flourish. Where possible, UK staff will be offered suitable alternative employment within the group but substantial redundancies are inevitable."

Australia 1.965 Austria 15.30 Belgium 45.00 Canada 2.05 Cyprus 0.7075 Denmark 8.52 Finland 6.88 Sittpffatf or NaiWod

France 7.52 Germany 2.20 Greece 370.00 Hong Kona 11.65 India £5.81 Ireland 08525 Israel 4.76

Italy 2^70 Malta 05425 Netherlands 2j472S New Zealand 2^3 Norway 8.65 Portugal 228.78 Saudi Arabia 5.68

Singapore 2.12 South Africa 541 Spein 185.00 Sweden 1057

SwitzHtand 150 Turkey 91,847 USA 1.4950

Bank f excluding Indian rupee end Israeli shehel).

■■ ■

12 FINANCE AND ECONOMICS

The Guardian Tuesday February 6 1996

Cellnet price war to squash Orange

v rMP

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Nicholas Bannister Technology Editor

THE battle for the

mobile phone mar- ket moved into a new phase yester- day when Cellnet, the market leader with more than 2.3 million customers, announced price cuts aimed at checking the success of Or- ange in the digital market Cellnet 60 per cent owned by British Telecom, said it was planning the largest price reductions seen in the p^n^iar industry — with sav- ings of up to 30 per cent Tbe new prices, due to come into effect at the begin- ning of March, bring Cellnet's charges in line with those of Vodafone, its main competi- tor. which is already in the process of introducing cheaper packages.

Both Cellnet and Vodafone are seeking to dose the price gap with Orange, the all-digi- tal operator which has signed up more than 400,000 custom- ers since starting operations in April 1994.

Orange, due to be listed on the Stock Exchange In March with an expected valuation of £2.7 billion, has been winning more digital customers in Its

network area than Its larger rivals mainly because it charges less for calls.

This success has been achieved even though it has not completed its network, it charges more for its handsets, and it operates the less popu- lar PCN mobile standard.

Cellnet's digital services have just under 300,000 cus- tomers, while its older ana- logue services have over 2 million. Digital services are dearer, can be used in many overseas countries, and can-

not be intercepted by eaves- droppers. However, handsets tend to cost more and call charges are usually higher than analogue ones.

Cellnet, which is not chang- ing basic monthly charges for its four services, is offering customers of three of the ser- vices a new option to buy a fixed amount of airtime for an extra monthly payment Cus- tomers paying between £2.12 and £12.50 a month more, ex- cluding VAT, will get airtime worth between £5.53 and £17.50 a month.

It is topping Sp a minute off call charges for its digital ser- vice for consumers, leaving rates at 30p a minute for peak calls and lOp for affpeak calls. Peak eaTig on its digital ser- vice for business or heavy users are coming down from 25p to 20p a minute, with the off-peak period being ex- tended to include Saturdays.

It Is also following the indus- try trend by introducing per second charging for digital

Howard Ford. Cellnet's managing director, said yes- terday's announcement was “bad news for our competi- tors who assumed they could compete on price alone”.

Industry sources said that Cellnet and Vodafone, who between them dominate the OK mobile phone industry, want to get more subscribers to switch from analogue to digital in order to free capacity on their allotted radio spectrum.

A Cellnet spokesman, who claimed the group still had . adequate capacity, admitted that it could replace every analogue subscriber with four digital customers. He added that the group had lob- bied the Government for extra spectrum to meet long- , term needs.

BT forces Oftel to back down on redundancy cost

BRITISH Telecom has forced Don Crnick- shank, the director general of Oftel, to back down from his attempt to prevent competitors having to contribute to the cost of the former stale-owned mo- nopoly’s massive redun- dancy programme, writes Nicholas Bannister.

Mr Cnrickshank said last month BTs rivals should not have to pay part of BT*s redundancy costs through

.interconnection, charges — the money which other op- erators pay BT for carrying their calls over its network.

He also fell that the cost of the BT chairman’s office, vacant .property, and pub- licity campaigns to win back customers should not be included in the calcula- tion of interconnect charges.

But in ruling yester- day, Mr Crulckshank said that he had only ruled out a

portion of the redundancy costs from the interconnec- tion paTeptatfnn. AlSO ex- cluded were the cost of Short-term investments.

A Oftel spokesman said

that BT had provided a lot more information, and as a | result two-thirds of its redundancy costs together with the expense of run- ning the chairman's office had been allowed. He added that BT was entitled to fully allocate these costs under the terms of Its licence.

Mercury, BTs main UK rival, said that it was shocked by Mr Crnlck- s hank’s decision.. Peter HoweU-Davies, Mercury's chief executive, said: “I'm appalled that Oftel should feel BT deserves special treatment as competition is 1 a fact of life for most operators. I

“Indeed, many have used redundancy to Improve their efficiency and reduce costs in the face of that competition. Typically, the costs of such activity are borne by the company and its shareholders, not by customers and competi- tors.*’ . ,

He pointed out that BT had admitted in 1992 that its voluntary redundancy programme bad been pit- ched higher than necessary to persuade more people to leave the company.

Oftel said that it had dis- allowed a third of ST’S redundancy costs because they were over the figure which the group was con- tractually obliged to pay. It added that tbe exclusions, including publicity ex- penses, would reduce in- land conveyance charges by almost 10 per cent.

Hanson pays a high price for past excesses

Dalgety

profits

adog’s

OUTLOOK/ Ian King on troubles facing dinner the £1 Obn conglomerate’s demerger

Drinkers are only too

familiar with the sce- nario. After a heavy session the night before, the morning after is accompanied by a hangover, which usually takes longer to shake off than the original binge did.

It is a sensation being suf- fered by the noble Lord Han- son. Not 48 hours after an- nouncing that his £11 billion business empire was break- ing up, sending the shares racing. City analysts were reaching for the aspirins.

They pruned £1 billion from Hanson’s market value, prompting an emergency tele- conference for bond holders on Friday, along with week- end rumours that the group was planning a £600 million special dividend pay-out Although Hanson would only admit yesterday that a special dividend has been dis- cussed. the fact that it is even being considered shows the tremendous problems associ- ated with selling the idea of a demerger to shareholders.

Hanson has always been fo- cused on dividends. and. in recent years especially, it has given the impression that it would rather do anything — I even cut its cherished contri- 1 button to the Conservative Party ~ than cut the pay-out. ;

While not yet a tried-and- 1 tested formula, special divi- dends have had their sucesses in the past. In recent months, several regional electricity companies, including Mid- lands and Northern, have used the tactic to ward off potential predators. Granada used the special dividend successfully. as part of its £39 billion as- sault on Forte, while other companies flush with cash have pandered the idea before settling on a share buy-back.

Hanson is considering a special dividend to appeal to one key group of shareholders in particular — the income funds, who have previously held the stock because of its relatively high yield, and who were said to be fuming at the way the demerger announce- ment was handled.

Some income funds were al- ready considering baling out, miffed at comments made by Lord Hanson last November, in which he ruled out increas- ing the dividend. In fact, sev- eral analysts said at the time that given Hanson’s debt

levels, a dividend cut would have been more appropriate.

As one analyst said yester- day: “The shares would have been marked down if the divi- dend had been cut, but the company would have won respect for dealing with the issue directly. But Lord Han- son is a proud man, and wouldn't have wanted to let his small shareholders down.”

Yet even a special dividend, which by definition is a one- off is unlikely to be the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.

Lord Hanson has promised that tbe four demerged com- panies will pay dividends ap- propriate to their sector, but the four’s combined divi- dends are unlikely to equal the present Hanson pay-out and certainly not if the Chem- icals company — which will

Hanson

_i_l_ Price relative

FTSEIOO ryrT

1992 1993 1994 1995 96

only be listed in New York — is excluded. The extra debt imposed by a special dividend would make this harder still.

Hanson’s attraction in the market has recently been solely due to Its high yield, which, even on last night’s share price, down 2'.4p at 192'ip, was 7.5 per cent

The City knows Hanson's demerger plans are a divi- dend cut by the back door, and it does not like it, special dividend or not.

What may save the day are hopes of a bidder emerging for one or more of the four new companies, spurring on the shares in the same way Thorn EMI’s have rocketed in recent weeks. Failing that, I Hanson will have to do what i it should, perhaps, have done 1 all along— tough it out I

Tony May

DALGETY’S profits fell by more than a fifth to £47.4 million in the first half of the year as the pet food and agribusiness group struggled to Inte- grate the Felix and Fido pet food brands bought a year ago from Quaker for £442 million.

Chief executive Richard Clothier said a key factor for file downturn was a. drop in sales at Spfllers, Dalgety’e old UK pet food business.

SpiUers has suffered from a shift In the UK pet food market especially In dog food, which has seen a stronger-th an- expected move towards “chunk" ] foods, which; Quaker al- ready produces, away from the path-style products which SpiUers makes.

This has been hastened by a rise in raw .materials costs which particularly af- fected pate-style brands. Mr Clothier said that un- usually high wheat prices — up 10 per cent in Decem- ber — had cut margins, but the company was already pushing those cost rises through to the consumer.

He predicted that Europe- ans. who mostly feed their pets with food they prepare themselves, will follow the lead of US and British pet owners who increasingly turn to prepared food in cans and ba^.

The group made a charge of £30 million for reorga- nising its pet food business and £10 minion for prop- erty revaluations, of&et by a gain of £62 million from the sale of its consumer foods unit

In the City, analysts cut their forecasts for foil-year profits from about £132 million to about

ClgS million.

Having sold its consumer foods business, Dalgety is now focused on three businesses: pet food, food Ingredients and animal feed and pig breeding.

In September It sold its Homepride sauces business to Campbell Soup for £58.6 million, and a month later sold its Golden Won- der snacks division for £54.6 million.

uwm-

News in brief

TUp cat ..

Clinton submits slimline budget

PRESIDENT Clinton yesterday sent a highly abbreviated bud- get to Congress projectlng2.2 per cent real gross domestic product growth in 1997 and 3:3 per cent in 1998. Instead of the usual 2,000 pages, yesterday’s document was a skimpy 20 pages because of the budget deadlock. .... „ „

The bare-bones budget was almost identical to the offer Mr r.HTTtwn put on the table in January. The (1.64 trillion budget projects the 1997 deficit reaching $160.6 billion, up slightly from this year's estimated $154.4 billion. A fuller budget plan will be presented next month. — Mark Tran in New York

Bank notes slight rise in cash

THE QUANTITY of cash in circulation grew only slowly last

month, damping hnpmnfjin imminent retail recovery which had

been fuelled by recent signs that consumer confidence was im- proving. the Bank ofEngland said yesterday that growth of notes and coin in cirailatian fell back to 0.3 per cent in January, from 05 per cent the previous month. The data, used as a guide to consumer activity, showed the seasonally adjusted annual rate dropping to 5.7 per cent from December's 5.9 per cent.

Combined with separate government data also published yes- terday. showing bousing starts fell in 1 985 by 15 per cent to 169,700

against 199.000 m 1994 tito money supply figures dented hopes of

imminent economic improvement — Sarah Ryle

Kinnock sticks by Iberia

EUROPEAN transput commissioner Nell Kinnock yesterday defended his decision to approve a £440 mfllion state handout to Spanish airiinq Iberia, saying the move was legally sound. Trans- port Secretary, Sir George Young, has condemned the decision as couiiteringOHbrte to establish fair competition to the skies.

Mr Kinnock said be hoped Iberia’s would be the last big subsidy to a state owned airline. — Keith Harper

United cuts bills for elderly

UNITED Utilities, the company formed from the merger of the North-west’s regional deefrietty company Narweb and North West Water, is r^ucing bills by £10 each for 100,000 pensioners who heat their homes with off-peak electricity.

The heating bibs reduction, announced yesterday, follows a £6.50 “efficiency rebate" to be paid annually for five years by North West Water. —Martyn Balsall

Germans buy Grace’s dialysis

WR Grace, foe American conglomerate, yesterday announced it is selling its kidney dialysis business to Germany's Fresenius in a deal worth $3:2 billion. If foe purchase is completed, Fresenius is likely to have sales ctf $35 billion in 1996 and will be one of the world’s largest dialysis companies. — Mark Tran in New York

Sears sells shoe stores

SHEFFIELD businessman Stephan Hmehiiffe ypsterflay an- noonoed his retail group Facia is buying 134 Saxone and Curtess shoe shops from Sears.

Sears said foe latest restructuring of British Shoe Corporation, which controls its retail chains, would Involve 90 redundancies from the Leicester headquarters followed by a maximum 200 further redundancies from foe group’s distribution business over foe next 12 months. — Tony May

Famell seeks bid backing

HOWARD Poulson, chief executive of Yorkshire-based electronic components company Famell. has embarked on an intensive round erf meetings with foe company's institutional investors to fry to persuade them to back its proposed SL85 billion takeover of US rival nemier Electronics.

The bid is considered audacious by tbe City because Famell is

l much smaller than Premier. Some of Famefl's tnsitutionaJ share- . Dalgety chief Richard Clothier has seen profits plummet PHOTOgn^GRwwTunrg | fhr many deal wouId earnings

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"Untmnion ur iwiljfck tvi [U^njfrri m Ho ■xrxfmvt irjnlml purcfwf Ofkm m th* UK- Iretui Ur of M«l josr}' A (jtftmxr. up m a SO mib radiui of London Gjrwrck W Mnlnm joJ 40nuJrtof other principal airport*. a ?fl uujor liS. Krred bj- Canrinnuil. Lnuinmn miwrb* rW-r^i Jn jcJyjq,

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Jj^Guardlan Tuesday February 6 1996

SPORTS NEWS 13

Rugby Union

Poppiewell clear to tackle Quins

Rob«,t Armstrong

Twickenham sur- prised Harlequins yesterday by giving the Irish interna- tional prop Nick Poppiewell

the go-ahead to play against

them for Newcastle Gosforth hi Saturday’s rearranged fifth-round Pilkington Cup game.

Tony Hallett, the RFU sec- retary, declared Poppiewell --eligible to play his first com- petitive game at Kingston Park on the ground that his

previous registration with Wasps rendered his national- ity irrelevant to a move be- tween English clubs.

Last week's surprise edict by the International Board that a 180-day residency period must be served by any player switching to a club in another union raised doubts about PqppleweU's eligibility

for Newcastle, because be has been living in Dublin this sea- son. The RFU, however, says the Irishman is bound only by its own 120-day qualification period which he has now served, having registered for Neweasfie last October.

In effect Twickenham is treating Poppiewell as an honorary Englishman, defin- ing his status on the basis of his club affiliations sitvy the start of this season.

Hallett refers to IB regula- tion 9 (section 4), which al- lows for an “open gangway between unions" where those unions agree to reduce or waive the 180-day residency period. So the Scottish inter- nationals Gary Armstrong and Doddle Web: should soon be eligible for Newcastle, pro- vided the Scottish RU raises no objection. Armstrong is ex- pected to be given the all- clear even though he will remain in Scotland, unlike

Minister urged to refine Bosman law with European counterparts

LABOUR’S Tom Pendry will urge the Minister of Sport Iain Sproat today to call a conference of Euro- pean Union sports minis- ters to establish a common line on the Bosman ruling, writes John Duncan.

“Wie have more to lose in Britain than anyone else,'* said the shadow sports minister. “We should take a lead in getting Europe’s sports ministers together to meet the EU commis- sion and work ont an agreement."

The relevant commission- ers are Padralg Flynn, who oversees Article 48 (free movement), and Karel van Miert, who deals with Article 85 (competition). Simon Murphy, the

Labour MEP for Midlands West, is organising cross- par ty support in the Euro- pean Parliament for a com- promise interpretation of the Bosman ruling.

Pendry will also discuss the possibility of amending European law to protect football’s transfer system and foreigner rules. “We could introduce a specific sports clause into the re- negotiated European treaty at this year’s inter- government conference,” he said.

"This is supported by Uefa and the FA but the Government has so far resisted the idea because they say it would lead to farther government and EU interference in sport."

Weir who plans to live on Tyneside.

HaDett believes EU employ- ment law would prevent any European union from impos- ing the 180-day quarantine on a professional player switch- ing clubs between unions. The IB regulation was in- tended primarily to apply to the movement of players be- tween the Pacific Islands and New Zealand.

Nevertheless the RFU remains concerned about too many Celts and Frenchmen displacing English players from frrst-dass rugby in their own country; a quota system may be in prospect

Meanwhile the Welsh Rugby Union is likely to take a tough line to maintain the strength of its club competi- tions by insisting on the 180- day rule for players who want to move to English dubs. Last week Vernon Pugh, the Welsh chairman of the IB, insisted that the 180-day rule would be enforced in Europe as well as the southern hemisphere.

The WRITs resolve is likely to be tested by Robert How- ley’s proposed move from Bridgend to Saracwns at the end of this season. The scrum- half made an Impressive debut for Wales on Saturday and his departure would be a blow to WRU plans to engage its leading players to develop tfw game in flip principality.

Saracens may also suffer a bitch in bringing the Austra- lian fiy-half Michael Lynagh from the Italian club Treviso to Southgate to take up a three-year contract as player- coach. Though he is under- stood to be no longer under contract to the Australian RFU, he will not want to kick bis heels in London for 180 days. Hallett said the RFU would have to consider sev- eral factors vi&A-vis Lynagh, including the question of whether he hpid an Austra- lian or Italian passport

Table Tennis

English Open launches world pro tour

Richard Jaffa

VmS year’s English Open I will be the inaugural event of the world’s first pro- fessional tour, organised by the International Table Tennis Federation and with $250,000 (£185.000) prize- money for the finals at the end of this year.

That prospect is almost cer- tain to draw the world’s top players to Kettering Arena from April 3-8, malting this Open the best in the event’s 75-year history and the stron- gest tournament in Britain since the 1977 world champi- onships in Birmingham.

It could also become the outstanding open tournament in the world. Its own prize- money of about £20,000 will be a record for foe event and, al- though this will provide rela- tively modest rewards com- pared with foe incomes of some leading players, the de- sire to qualify for foe lucra- tive finals should bring than to Kettering.

The presence of Chinese players, among them the men’s and women’s world singles champions, will be en- couraged by foe feet that foe first finals are almost certain to be held in China, possibly in Tianjin.

The TTTF is talking wife

the International Manage- ment Group about the promo- tion and sponsorship of the tour, although it is likely that any sponsorship deal will, for now. cover only the finals. Umbrella sponsorship for foe tour — possibly comprising eight tournaments before foe finals — will have to wait nn til next year.

The English Table Tennis Association is still looking for a suitable sponsorship deal for the Open, and its bargain- ing position may have been, reduced slightly by foe foci that foe tournament will coin- cide with the Boat Race, limit- ing opportunities for televi- sion coverage.

Racing

New Tote conditions favour Warm Spell

Ken Oliver

GARY MOORE is hoping for a warm spell in more ways than one at Newbury on Saturday. The Epsom trainer said: "Warm Spell is in good form for the Tote Gold Trophy. I just hope the weather relents."

A new clause in foe race conditions has certainly im- proved foe six-year-old’s pros- pects. The weights rose only 31b for the £100,000 handicap after yesterday’s acceptance stage, leaving him still 4lb out of foe handicap headed by Moorish on list 10lb. -

But the new clause stipu- lates that if no horse at l&rt or above is declared at foe over-

night stage fl»

be raised to list, vbich wm

bring Warm Spell up to foe minimum lOst . .

"That seems fine,"

Moore. “He hasn’t been held up in his work and our mdy problem is the weafoerHe has done plenty ofwOTksmce Kempton and he will be even fitter this time.

Warm Spell who was ha^

fog his first run over hurdle

Sr 433 days, although he had been running on the Flat, teat Frickley by four lengths when landtag the Bic Razor Handi- cap at Kempton last monfo.

The Tote make him 7-2 favourite for Saturdays rag* followed by 5-1 Sxp^Gtft, 13-2 Pridwell. 9-1 13-1 Squire Silk, TCiarnton Gate and Cheryl s Lad.

"Tony McCoy was impressed with him at Kempton mid said he would ride him again," said Moore. "I would give Pridwell plenty of respect and they say Frickley has improved since, but he would need to. I definitely wouldn’t swap Warm Spell for any of than.”

After a marathon four-and- a half-hour inquiry at Port- man Square yesterday, foe trainer Leu Lungo and jockey Tim Reed were exonerated from committing a breach of rule 151 over the running and riding of Livio at Haydock last December.

The gelding, a 14-1 shot, was described as “never placed to

challenge” by the official form book when eighth, beaten 19 lengths, to Great Easby.

The matter was referred to the Jockey Club after Livio landed a two-lengths success in a 14-runner handicap at Catterick a week later when he was sent off 84 favourite.

A relieved Lungo blamed a ypw of misunderstandings as the reason for the inquiry. "Considering foe difference

in quality of foe Haydock and

Catterick race, and consider- ing that it was admitted in foe

inquiry that Livio had been dropped 41b in error between foe two races, the Catterick win came as no surprise.”

AtLingfield this afternoon. Tragic Hero (4L20X with foe very capable Jim Durkan in the saddle, looks worthy cf foe «ap in the wwflimUpg Peach Handicap for amateur ridere.

Martin Pipe’s four-year-old has not been seen out an the Flat since foriahing down foe field behind Bentico at Leices- ter in October, but is fit from hurdling, having run Danjrng to threequartsrs cf a length at Ludlow last month.

Frankie Dettori can land a double with Cornish Snow and Sweet Supposim Cornish Snow (3.20) was a well backed favourite on his only

outing last year, finishing

fourth to Midnight Blue at Afr- eet, and should prove too good for foe moderate maid- ens he meets in the Nectarine Stakes.

Sweet Supposin (2J50) was beaten half a length by Mas- nun last month, but now en- joys a 41b pull in, the weights for foe Plum maiming Stakes. With the champion jockey taking over foe reins, I expect the placings to be reversed.

Results

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Ready to return . . . once-troubled Jennifer Capriati *is happier and much wiser now*

Capriati launches second comeback attempt in Paris

Athletics

Christie ruled out until the great outdoors

Stephen Worley

RITAIN's Olympic sprint champion Lin- ford Christie finds his indoor season written off vir- tually before it began.

Christie, a late entrant at the national indoor champi- onships in Birmingham test weekend, juddered to an un- timely stop in the 60 metres final on Saturday afternoon, victim of a strained adductor muscle, and yesterday it was announced that he will not compete, as scheduled, in this weekend’s Ricoh Tour inter- national or in the Great Brit- ain v France match in Glas- gow at foe end of foe month.

Indeed, if he retires at foe end of this season the smat- tering of folk in the National Indoor Arana will have been the last to see him run or walk the boards. Pantomime, of course, cannot be ruled out in the future.

Such was Christie's remark- able recovery after the world championship finals in Goth- enburg last summer when, after finishing sixth, he col- lapsed on the track, that spec- ulation as to his future must remain circumspect Dono- van Bailey, foe world cham- pion. has already cast doubts on foe true nature of foe Brit- on’s injury in Sweden. The Canadian also said he be-

lieved Christie, despite pro- tracted denials, would defend his title in Atlanta.

Three athletes who will def- initely be in Atlanta, assum- ing they are fit are Peter Whitehead. Richard Nemr- kar and Liz McColgan, who were named yesterday for the Olympic marathons. The two men, currently carrying inju- ries, must show their fitness by competing in a half-mara- thon by the end of May.

Whitehead was fourth at the world championships in Gothenburg; Nerurkar, foe former World Cup winner, was seventh. McColgan. after a Chronic Injury, returned to marathon running in Tokyo in November and came seventh. The selectors took into consid- eration her past record and her ability to compete well in hot, humid conditions.

The remaining three names will be announced at the end of April, after this year's Lon- don Marathon. Paul Evans and Eamonn Martin yester- day expressed disappoint- ment that the selectors had left only one place open for the men. Steve Brace’s recent second place at the Houston Marathon in 2hr lOmin 35sec brought him close to foe third spot during Saturday's de- bate. The conditions were hu- mid. though the heat not in- tense. and his chances of selection remain high.

Lister gives Parsons backing to high jump on to the board

David Irvine

PARIS, where as a 14- year-old In 1990 she became the youngest player to reach foe semi- finals of a Grand Slam event, is the setting for Jennifer Capriati’s second attempted comeback to foe women’s tour. Her first, in Philadelphia In November 1994, lasted only one match.

Her successful applica- tion for a wild card into next week’s $450,000 (£300,000) Paris indoor event, where injury pre- vents Steffi Graf defending her title, surprised even WTA Tour officials — “we know nothing about it” — in spite of foe rumours in Australia recently that the Olympic champion was contemplating a return.

A tournament official said yesterday that though foe

19-year-old American had not played competitively for 14 months, “she says she is now ready physically and mentally after a long prepa- ration in Florida.”

Capriati, who was ranked sixth in foe world at three different periods from 1991 to 1993 awH who beat Graf for Olympic gold in Barce- lona in 1992, left foe game alter losing in the first rronnd of foe 1993 US Open.

In December that year she was arrested for alleg- edly stealing a ring, a charge dismissed in a fam- ily court, and five months later was arrested in a Flor- ida motel and charged with possession of marijuana.

After undergoing psychi- atric treatment and drug rehabilitation she at- tempted to resume her career, but after losing in three sets in Philadelphia to Anke Huber she with- drew from foe 1995 Austra-

lian Open and again disap- peared from view.

At the US Open last September stories of Ca- priati being “in no fit state to play tennis” were denied by her agent, Barbara Perry of IMG. who said she was both fit and happy. “She has learned an awful lot in the last two years and is a happier person now, and certainly, much wiser. If she does cpme. bqck it will be only when, she’s ready.”

On her WTA Tour debut, at Boca Raton, foe 14-year- old Capriati reached foe final. When she left foe tour in 1993 she had won £1 million in prize-money.

Britain’s Tim Henman has moved up six places to 79fo — his best position yet — in the ATP rankings after his semi-final finish in Shanghai last week. Greg Rusedski, the highest- ranked Briton, is 39th.

JOHN LISTER, who is not to seek re-election as foe British Athletic Federation's treasurer, yesterday threw his weight behind the inter- national high jumper Geoff Parsons as his successor. writes Stephen Bier ley. Par- sons will stand against Mar- tin Evanson, the Southern Counties treasurer, for the va- cant treasurer's post at next month’s annual meeting.

Lister said he had decided to get out after “becoming weary cf all the internal bick- ering, backbiting and aggra- vation that exists in athletics and is doing so much damage to its future. The greatest hope for foe future of the sport is the current dialogue between the federation and foe international athletes. It is one of foe most important things to have happened to the sport".

Lister. 10 years in the post, said it was vital that foe pro- fessional athletes had a close involvement in the top man- agement He praised the work of Roger Black and Parsons, who were instrumental in pull- ing Britain's international ath- letes together last year into a

loosely knit but increasingly influential association.

"The proposal for Geoff to take my place is very interest-

ing. There is a professional fi- nancial department in foe fed- eration. so it's not a position that the old-fashioned honor- ary treasurer would be regarded as necessarily fill- ing It's more a strategic posi- tion, and in one fell swoop that vital link between the athletes and foe federation could be made."

Lister, as a newly elected council member of foe Euro- pean Athletic Association, will automatically attend meetings of the BAF council so he will still be able to influ- ence the domestic scene. Thus, if Parsons were elected ahead of Evanson, the BAF executive chairman Peter Radford would have furthered his grand design — to give the top athletes a greater say in foe running of the sport — and kept Lister on board.

However, the chances of Parsons being elected appear slim. Evanson, who before last year's annual meeting circulated a letter that was widely critical of Lister, seems likely to gain the clubs’ backing although he was roundly beaten by Lister last year.

“Geoff is a very able young man and I think foe future of the sport has to be with people like that" said Lister.

Salter given 21 -day ban after drugs charge

ryVRRRN SALTER, a con- L/dittonal

ditional jockey attached to Rod Mlllman's Cullomp- ton stable, was yesterday banned 21 .days (starting Thursday) after failing a drug test.

Salter's urine was found to contain a cannablnoids after he was asked to pro- vide a sample at Chepstow on November 22.

In a brief statement foe 23 year-old jockey said: “I deeply regret having had to appear before the disciplin- ary . committee this afternoon.

“The positive finding of cannabis was a result of my unknowingly consuming the drug in cake form at a party.

“I believe my explanation has been accepted by foe Jockey Club and is reflected in foe tact that I was disqualified for less than a month.”

Tests are carried out at one meeting a week on av- erage. They are operated by the Sports Council with three to six riders tested each time.

• Richard Donwoody

and Paul Car-berry were in

foe money at Navan yester- day. Dnnwoody was suc- cessful on Perspex Gale, while Car berry scored on Sorry About That

64 cards lost

QACING has again been hit ^■by the icy weather, with today's meetings at. Carlisle and Warwick, like Newton Abbot yesterday, abandoned because cf frost

This brings the number of meetings lost this season to 64

Prospects are poor for tomorrow's fixtures at Ascot and Ludlow. Both courses undergo inspections this morning, while Huntingdon and Wlncanton are pessimis- tic about their chances of rac- ing on Thursday.

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14 SPORTS NEWS

The Guardian Tuesday February 6 1996

Soccer

Boro ready for second Brazilian

THE LURE of Teesside is becoming irresist- ible to South Ameri- ca's finest Yesterday, in near- Arctic conditions, the Brazilian international de- fender Branco arrived at Mid- dlesbrough's Riverside Sta- dium to discuss the prospect of forging an improbable part- nership with his fellow-coun- tryman -Tim in ho Although the 31-year-old hill-back would not cost a fee, having bought out his con- tract with Internacionale of Brazil, he is believed to be de- manding wages of about £20.000 a week.

“juninho is very happy here and he said be would like me to come and join him.” said Branco. "We have played together before in the national squad. We are good friends and that is the main reason why I settled on Middlesbrough.

"I wanted to come here be- cause England has one of the best leagues in the world. 1 had a few offers from other English clubs and also from teams in Japan, Spain and America, but I want to play alongside Juninho.”

The news from Newcastle was less encouraging yester- day as die Premiership lead- ers made no attempt to deny that the proposed signing of the Colombian Faustino As- prilla had collapsed.

Parma said at the weekend that Newcastle had been try- ing to reduce the £6.7 million fee after it was revealed As- prilla had not fully recovered , from a knee injury sustained almost five years ago.

Newcastle's manager Kevin , Keegan declined to discuss Asprilla while underlining I

■ V

his determination to bring in more players of quality.

"I want to strengthen things but the problem is Sliding the right men.” he said. “I have always said we could win something with the squad we have already; we are trying to buy for next sea- 9011, not this one.”

The Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson has stressed that Tomas Brolin's stay in West Yorkshire need not be brief and unfulfilling.

Dismayed at his failure to win a place even in a side de- pleted by injuries and suspen- sion at Aston Villa, the Swed- ish international forward admitted he was considering his future less than three months after his arrival from Parma for £4.5 million.

Brolin's sarcastic declara- tion that he “wasn’t good enough” to line up at Villa Park prompted Wilkinson to explain the thinking behind a decision made all the more confusing ter the manner of a comprehensive 3-0 defeat “All talk of a rift of a bust- up or a fall-out is absolute rubbish," said Wilkinson. “The fact is he wasn’t selected on Saturday. He has not settled into Premiership foot- ball as well as everybody would have liked. And he has not produced the form which we know he is capable of.” Everton, it seems, have con- vinced the Russian Football Association that Andrei Kan- chelskis should be released from international duty to help the FA Cup holders in their fourth-round replay at Port Vale tomorrow night Kancbelskis is scheduled to depart for a four-nation tour- nament in Malta tonight but after several days of patient negotiation, he will probably take his place at Vale Park.

Enter Big Mac in the

Cynthia Bateman in Dublin witnessesa damp start to a new era for the Irish Republic

' • 4 i

■4 :« J *1

:v -mm]

. v-fvj

Smiling Irish eyes - . .Mick McCarthy takes over at Lansdowne Road pHcmxsfWttJOtticoGU.

IT RAINED as it only can in Ireland. Lansdowne Road dripped un invitingly; the great empty stands ware desolate, draughts and eddies whispered Big Jack’s name along the terraces. His pres- ence is still there, sure enough; but he is not.

Into his giant shadow yes-, terday strode the Republic of Ireland’s new manager Mick McCarthy, who to take up his new post has left his job at MElwaH with two years of his contract to run. Thus 45 days after Charlton's departure, the Football Association of Ireland’s six-man committee has chosen the man the Irish people thought from the be- ginning was right for the job.

Alex Ferguson gave the cold shoulder. Kenny Dalglish flirted briefly and Joe Kin- near was less than enthusias- tic when the contract turned out to be for only two years and the money only £80,000. Big Mac, as the supporters call the former centre-half who won 57 caps and led them to the quarter-finals in Italia I '90, wanted the job at any price.

"Will it make you a million- , aire like Jack?” he was asked. ! , “Only if somebody takes the 1 other millions out erf my bank,” he joked.

It was mostly good hu- 1 moured as the sartorially su- , , perlor McCarthy — Big Jack never had his tie straight or his collar turned down — posed for photographs in the pouring rain.

Like Chariton. McCarthy has a commanding presence. Mare than anything it is the straight back, the look-me-in- th e-eye challenge and the ability to pick out individuals in a crowd. He is not only a friend of Charlton but a devotee.

Yesterday Charlton returned

the compliment: “You know the way they do things in the FAI,” he said. "But they seem to have done things right this timfi. I'm glad he's got the job. He'll be good for Ireland.

"People who say Mick will be a copy <rf me are talking nonsense. He has totally dif- ferent Ideas on the way the game should he plaited.”

McCarthy confirmed: “1 will do it my way and hope- fully it will be a successful way. If it isn't they will have the doors open on the ferry waiting to send me back” — specifically to his home in Kent and his wife Fiona and three young children.

His way, if his style at Mill- wall is followed, and because the younger players he inher- ited from Charlton play the ball to feet, is likely to be sophisticated.

"My aim is to qualify for the World Cup in France in 1998. But after the great suc- cess of the last 10 years, ex- pectations are very high. I have the feeling that every- body thinks it is cut and dried.”

Liechtenstein, the side who stalled the slide that saw the Irish eliminated from the European Championship and led to Charlton’s resignation, will be McCarthy's first World Cup qualifying oppo- nents in Dublin on August 31. Before that he has friendlies against Russia in May, an away game In the Czech Republic and a tour of the United States for the US Cup tournament.

It was after the US Cup in 1992 that McCarthy hung up his boots for foe Republic. Asked if he was still too close to the players to be an effective manager, he said he thought he was chums with 27 players at Mill wall until he dropped 13 of them.

“That’s what you have to be able to swallow,” he said.

The present Republic play- ers in their mid-thirties — "You can put foe names to foe ages, as their manager I want to talk to them before they read anything in the papers” — will undoubtedly have to go as McCarthy seeks new talent

He said that if the farmer Millwall player Chris Ann- strong was eligible for Ireland —he is — he would approach him- To get foe in-form Tot- tenham striker would be a first and terrific coup. Arm- strong would not be jeopardis- ing Ids dub chances by de- claring for the Republic because foe Bosman ruling has ended foe restriction on the number of EU players a club can field in European and domestic competitions.

McCarthy batted the ques- tions backwards and forwards: here a subtle drop-shot there a swiftly volleyed ace when old enmities were mentioned.

He declared himself excited and daunted at foe prospect of his job and paid tribute to the effect Charlton's success had had on foe Irish domestic game, “When 1 started play- ing for the Republic, 1 could walk down foe street and no one recognised me; now look at all of you here.”

Once the formal news con- ference was over, McCarthy, with just a trace of sweat on bis brow, disappeared under a mountain of microphones and cameras as foe. important l questions such as "Do you like Shredded Wheat?” were asked.

When he emerged, Louis Kilcoyne, foe president of foe FAI, popped the champagne cork. “You know I'm teetotal, don’t you?” McCarthy warned. The FATs officials laughed nervously. McCarthy held up foe glass for foe pho- tographers and then put down foe drink untouched. The same man as Jack Charlton? Think again. But he may prove he is every bit as good.

4* *

Blake may get chance for Bolton

Nathan blake. who has foiled to score in seven matches for Bolton since his move from Sheffield United, may get foe chance to break his duck at Bumden Park tonight if the FA Cup fourth- round tie against Leeds sur- vives the weather.

Bolton's undersoil heating

will ensure that the pitch is playable but snow and ice on the terracing could be a prob- lem. If foe game goes ahead Blake may be in for John McGinlay, whom he replaced on Saturday at Ewood Park when Bolton's top scorer for the last three seasons limped off with a calf injury.

What next from out of Africa?

FA annoyed by hotel ‘rip-offs’

John Duncan

VISITING supporters are being ripped off by hotels hiking up prices in cities hosting Euro *96, the Football Association claimed yesterday. The FA is “seri- ously alarmed” at reports that some hotels are more than trebling their prices for the tournament in June.

“We have heard of one city- centre hotel which normally charges £40 a night for bed and breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday seeking £160 for the same room, excluding breakfast." said David Davies, the FA’s director of communications.

The problem is that none of the host cities outside London has enough accommodation — Manchester, for example, is expecting 50,000 visitors but foe city has only 28,000 beds. Demand for major city- centre hotels has been such that there are said to be few rooms available in the me- dium and higher price brackets.

Hoteliers, however, hit back at the FA last night “We rearrange our prices as a mat- ter of course,” said an execu- tive of Britannia hotels, whose group takes in the host cities of Manchester, Bir- mingham and London. “That is business. When there is a quiet period it is reflected in our rates; when it is busy, that is too." Britannia's Man- chester hotel will charge £140

a night for a single room dur- ing Euro '96; last night one could have stayed there for £75.

The local authorities are be- latedly contemplating camp- sites for supporters — foe youth hostel was block- booked by Scandinavians a year ago — but are concerned about security problems. Manchester is also looking at the use of halls of residence at I local universities who have brought term-time forward to prevent the championship j dashing with exams.

Some foreign tour opera- tors are encouraging support- ers to make day trips to avoid hotel rip-ofik, which would have a serious impact on spending by fans in foe host cities. “What we are seeking is a football festival that reflects nothing but credit on this country,” said Davies. "Frankly, hotels which ex- ploit our guests are letting everyone down. We appeal to them to rethink what they are doing.”

The overcharging problem does not appear to concern smaller guest houses. Jenny Kirk, owner of foe Tourist Board-commended Newly n Guest House In Sheffield (£17 per night), said: “We haven't had any bookings for Euro' 96 yet. We're more worried about the swimming foe week before; we’ve got half foe Ger- man team staying with us. If I can fill the place for 10 days that's good enough business forme.”

Amid the Nations1 Cup euphoria John Perlman in Johannesburg wonders where an African World Cup contender may emerge

Before foe start of the 20th African Nations’ Cup Issa Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football, said it was “only a matter of time before Africa wins foe World Cup”.

He was echoing the thoughts of many, starting with the former England coach Walter Winter-bottom in 1962. who predicted an African country would be world champions before the end of the century. Hayatou was less specific but looks like being more accurate, with only the 1998 World Cup finals to come before foe end

of tho m i Henri in m.

It would have been interest- ing to ask Hayatou which of the four teams playing on the last day of the African Nations' Cup — the final was preceded by foe third-place play-off — he thought most likely to fulfil this dream.

Would he opt for South Af- rica. winners of foe tourna-

Results

Soccer

The Independent News

Call 0891

i Reports Service

33 77+

Arsenal	00	Ipswich Town	18	ShefIrekJ United	18
Aston vuia	11	Leeds United	oa	Sheffield Wed.	14
Bintv City	34	Letooster C2ty	38	Southhampton	20
Bbckbum	SI	Liverpool	04	Stoke City	90
Boltan	38	Man. City	02	Sunderland	27
Brarttford	24	Man. United	01	Tottenham Hot	07
Burnley	31	Midcfiesbrough	23	West Ham	12
Chelsea	08	Millwall	29	Wimbledon	28
Coventry Crty	17	Newcastle Utd	18	Wolves	37
Derby County	28	Norwich City	18	Celtic	09
Everton	09	Nottm. Forest	13	Rangers	io
HudcLTown	32	OPR	23

•IV

Pcufraouadi Wins tort Utd v Wilton AltL POMTWS UAnmi First OMstom All match ss postponed.

AVON INSURANCE COMBINATION; First Bosh matches postponed.

Alpine Skiing

MEN'S WORLD CUP {Gormiscft-P»rMn- fcuehenl* Super glwt ririunc 1. W Psr- atfioner i Ilf imin 19 62set 3, L Atphand |Ft> 1.19 83; 3. P Wlrth lAutJ 1.2005:4*. S Krauss (Gerfc J LesWnen (Fin 1 1.2030; a. K Ghedlna Iff) 130 57. Ateo: SO. Q Bell (OB) 7.2270. Standlupei i. H Knaus (AuO 207: 2 SHaanui 200: 1 Kjus 180; 4=. F Nyfaere lS*e): R KroeU (Autl 101; 0. Alphart 156. OwmB: 1. Kjua 8T4ptK 5L 0 Mader (Aul) Boat a M von Gruerrigen iSwtuj 738; 4=. Alphand; Knaus 688: 6. A Tombs (rtj 618. Alen 137. Ben 6.

American Football

NFL RNO BOWL (Honolulu)- NFC Stars 1 30. AFC Stars 73.

Basketball

NRAX Indiana 90, Near York 83: Orlando 122. San Antonio 109 ioQ; Washington 115. Phoenix 123 lot); Atlanta 106. Charlotte 104: Denver 105. Chicago 99 LA Lafcera 110. Utah 103. Golden Sate Now Jet.

; sey B2 Standk.ua. EMa OaJ— iw ! Attends- 1. Orlando (W33. Li 3, Pct.717.

I GEM); 2. New York |2S-16-.S36-*1. a Wash. Ington (22-2J.JDO-7W: 4. Miami (20-28- .435-131; 6. New Jersey H8-Z7- 400-14X): 8. Boston (17-28- 378-15X1: 7. Philadelphia [8- ; 36-. 182-24). Ciwarak 1. Chicago (Wai. LA.

! PcLSll, GBOt: Z Indiana (31-15-.674-10Q; 3, Cleveland 12520- 558-16). 4. Atlanta (25- rtJ-JSB-lfll; 5. Detroit (32-21- J12-1SJ: 0. Charlotte (21-23-.477.1SX): 7. Milwaukee [ 1 6-27- J 72-3*1; a Toronto ( I3-32--389-ZS). Western Cowfw.nBM Hkhmh 1. Ban Anwito 0*29- L14. Pa. 674.. GB0). 2. Utah (3tMS-.6B7-OJ; 3. Houston (3tM7-.89B-l); A Denver (19-26- 42MIK S. OsJIaa (15-38- 34S-1*), 6. Memeeota (12-31- -279-17); 7. Vancouver (10-35-^22-20). Padfte 1, Seujta (W33. Liz Pa.733. GBO}. 2. Sam- menw (24-17-565-7); X LA Lakers (28-10- 5785): A Portland (22-24-.47B-1 tif), 5, Phoe- nix (20-24- 465-10!): ft Golden Stale (20-25- •444-13); 7. LA Clippers ( 1020-056-17).

Chess

would vomrs CHAMPIONSHIP

(Jeen. Spk Feet paw Z Pofgar (Win] 0. Xla Jun (CM! 1. Tvnnnd and AM ptaiwn drawn. Foortti pamac Xie 0. PoL gar 1. afwBnus; Xie 2, Polgar 2.

Cricket

RED STRIPS CM Pi Psrt-oOSpski Guy- ana 173 (Dhanraj 4-64) & 1« (N dfl Groat 75; Antoine 5-47). Trinidad & Tobago 23B (P Simmons BO. K Mason 67. Browne 5-46) 8 88-2 Trwutm 8 Tobago won Dy eight wickets Bridgetown, WuMward la £33 IK junior iTl & 310 IU P6pe 74. J Murray 70,. BftthxJoe 339 , A Griffith 1011 & 213-ft EUiOJ-Jo-i won by tour wtVoS Montego Bay: Jamaica J2J-7CC: iR Samuel? 126 □

ment after demolishing Ghana 3-0 in the semi-finals and fogn beating Tunisia? It is not a bad bet on the face of it

Lack of resources con- stantly choke so much foot- balling promise in Africa; 11 teams were forced to with- draw from the qualifiers be- cause they could not afford the costs. That would not be a problem for the relatively rich south. Resources were put to good- use in this tournament

South Africa’s coach Clive Barker was given a team of assistants to analyse every rival, and foe former England international Budgie Byrne's spying on Ghana played a key role In their semi-final win. The players were well looked after and properly paid and nobody interfered in team selection.

There was no such luck for some teams. Zaire’s coach Muhsin Ertugal resigned after the minister of sport As- sea Mindre and foe president

Morgan 87. N Parry 74). Leeward b 227 8 184 (M Glbte 4-42). Jamaica won by an Imrings and 13 runs.

Ice Hockey

BRITON LBACMfc Prendw; Cardiff 8. HawnaBa 4j Durham ft Rr* 8; Milton Ksynaa 1. Humberside 3; Slough 7. Bas- togstoka 5. MvMaa On* Billbighwn 5. Chelmsford £ Blackburn 9, Toltord 7; Man- chester 4. Bracknell £ Mwrayfleld X Quad- tort) ft Paisley 5. Swindon Z Peterborough X Dumfries 11: SoUhufl 5. Medway ft NHL: Buffalo Z Tampa Bay & Wtonfoeg Z Vancouver 4; NY blandare 6. DaHaa \ An- aheim 1. ChtaafiO 4. atmJnga Eastern Cnoteranoai Nartaaaato 1. Pittsburgh (W31. L17. T3. GF23B. 8A171. Pta65); Z Montreal (26-304-166-16848); 3. Boaton C2-Z0-7-17S-m-5l); 4. Harttam {2*25-8- 144-163-46’; S, Buffalo (20-23-3-150-1®- 4ST. 6. Ottawa <9-404-118-20820). ABtar- Bce 1. Florida (W32. Lift Tft OF1B2. GA142, PteTOL 2. NY Rangew (30-12-10- 188-148-70); 8. Philadelphia (28-14-11-178- 134-43}; 4. Wash Atgton (25-51-5- T4fr 134- 55): ft New Jersey (28024-133-126-52): ft Tampa Bay (ZZ-21-7-1S1-1M-31); 7. NY to- 1 lenders (14.284-148-182-38). Western Cewfersmaai Oantasb 1. Dafcoit (W36. L8. T4. ®=184. GAIOft PB7B); Z CWcago (28- ts-1 f-tB4-T45-67). 3. Toronto (23-20-0- IX- 151-5^; 4. St Louis (2 V21-9-133- 143-51); ft Wtonipug (21-284-178-18848); ft Dallas (14-281V140-177-38). PamWe: 1, Colorado (W28. Lift T9. GF203. GA14S. PtafiS); 2. Vancouver (T8-20-13- 189-17S-S1); 3. Cal- gary (1823-10-154-139-48); 4. Loa AngetM (17-24-12-178-187-46); 5. Edmonton (1828 8136-19842); 6. Anahettn (18288145- 17541): 7. San Joea (11-388168233-27).

Motor ^>ort

OBA ROLEX M-HOUR RACK (Day- tona): 1. W Taytar (US). S Sharp (US), J Pace (US) Olds mobile R and S MK-1D. 887 laps. iaU24ffl0ti;2. a Horetf (if). M Papto (to. B Wollefc (Fr). D Theya (Bel) Farran 333SP. ggr, X J Downing (US), 8 Hamtet (US). T McAdam (US). B Weddell (US) Mazda Kudzu DLM. 8*9 A*ace tft D Mar- snail (US). S Marshall (US). M Konlg (08), P GhanberalCS} Porsche 911, 698:20, RDy- aon (U3). J Weaver (GB). B Lettzlnger (US),

A WhBaca t<58) Ford R and 8 MK-CI, SM

Snooker

BEHSON AND HEDGES MASTERS

(Weniblay ConleronsB Cantra): Hrat rorowA A Htaka (Btfll M O Roe (Eng) 82 ffaaewd nwd D Mui gaw (Wales) M P Ebden (Eng) 8-&

Fixtures

(780 unless statet '=pliii Inspection)

Soccer

FA CUP: Fourlft iwte Boifon v Leeds (74$), Hodderefleld v PeierMrough (7 AS); Ipewleh v Walsall (7AS1.

BNDSLBOH LEAOUfi Tenon Itl -B)uA- pooi v Burnley; Bristol Rvn « ChasorfleW; Carl We r Yorii f7ASi. ■Wycombe v Rother- ham (7.46 ). Swansea * Stockport Thlrtfc ■Chester <r Norlhamplon: 'Cohdieslei v Scartsorough (7 4S). Uariingioti * Here, ford 'Rochdale r Preston (7.45): Scun- thorpe * Bury. Torquay » Barnet 17.451.

of foe country’s FA insisted on helping pick the team; and two Europe-based players | quit because they had not been paid.

South Africa has more sporting facilities than foe rest of foe continent com- bined. a healthy sporting ego and foe added inspiration of a major football trophy won at foe first try. But there are some clouds about

The average age of foe team that won the cup is 27. That is not alarming: foe short-term goals of success in the tourna- ment and a boost for the game have been richly realised- But it points to a much deeper problem:. South Africa has failed to introduce young tal- ent into foe higher levels of the game for some time, with many first division clubs rely- ing heavily on imported play- ers of ordinary ability.

The national under-20 team which was eliminated from ! the world championships at , the first hurdle by lowly Mau-

ritius had only two players with regular experience in a first division that is hardly bursting with talent - That at least is a problem Ghana does not have. Despite losing the third-place gamp 1-0 to Zambia, a Ghanaian team with an average age of around 21 played some won- derful football, spoiled by their finishing- Many of the players are graduates of the team that won the 1991 Dfrder- 17 World Cup. all but a few now play in Europe and Ghana won foe Under-17 tro- phy again last year.

There is no doubting the richness of Ghana's promise. But in this tournament their team, even with Tony Yeboah and Abedi Pele, never gave the sustained quality of per- formance to suggest an ability to challenge Europe’s and South America's best It is difficult indeed to think of any team that did, even if South Africa came close against Ghana. Zambia gave one brilliant perfor- mance, against Egypt in the quarter-finals but faded badly after that Their key man Ka- lusha Bwalya is now 32.

TEN NEWTS SCOTTISH CUP: Third - ■_ m m

romft; ‘ Berwick t Du ndofl Utd. Groeoocfc 2>DOVft IFl DFT6T Morton v Mantras*. ~

SCOTTISH UKAOUSi Swoond BMdnr

Clyde w Queen ol South. gPAUWWO CHAU-ENQS Clift Omwtar SKlITlQ fbulc Kwtnrina y Sfaufih 17.451.

Werner Perafooner of Italy tnnirrtnn iBnmmin^S'oMiii miiti claimed his first World Cup. Leek Tn v Accrington Stanley. Victory Of foe Season in Gar-

lOS LBAOUBi Flrte; Basingstoke Tn v n.4srh-Partt*nkirehpn vaster- Mertow; stfertcay Tn v Thame uid; Hey. nuscn-ranemorcnen yesier-

bridge Swifts v Staines Tn; Werrtolsy v day m a Super-giant Slalom

^v5S^5?TDSfo^r^-S three times of

Tn; Hamwon v Saffron Waklen Tn; Loath- pTODlems OH the piste, rfera- erhead w Brectoieti Tn. Third: Hartford Tn foon^T took advantage Of a

high starting number to beat ONMewAtheratone y VS Rugby; GrsM»- Luc Alphanri of France and end & N v Merthyr 11451 tefftach Ere- Anvh-in'ti'P-rhnrlc wirHi sham Utd v Buckingham Tn; TJmrvrorth w AUStna S KltnCK Wirm.

Nonsaion Bor. ScwAfaewni Eitth 8 Betve- B , I

d ere w Snffngboume; Weymoutn y Bash- DOXuig

”*** T|0,J Yuri Arbachakov of Russia h-w counties LtAous: Firwt Fulton retained his WBC flyweight i

title by outpointing Raul Jua- , northern couNTus bast leaouki rez of Mexico in Tokyo.

Hr— nfort Amok) T y Sheffield; Qssett T*.

Denaby U. Cope Fourth rouuh Hamefo Golf Main * Selby T: Livaraedge y Brlgg T

PONTITOI NAOtM*^ F*ra» HMdiw Ever- Tan WtXJSnam Has climbed to

No. 28 in the world rankings

avon insurance COMBINATION-- on foe strength of his hack-to- ,

back European Tour victories

ampton (ftoi: west Ham v Norwich oat: in foe Johnnie Walker Classic I

chart ay „ wimteedan pm. seooud a* ^ Singapore and the Heine--1 LKAHIIE' OR STALMSa LlMivantlntO r I ken Classic in Perth. J

Holywell 17.45). cup, Qiwar IhiaL fire* .

lev Rlitt Tn v Connah's Quay. Basketball

IRtSH LEAOUK Ftot DteWtam Batty- „ " , _

da to » Omaoh Tn; Newry v Dwuiary. The Chicago Bllllrf 18-game

ended cmSim-

ooMterMn me aittomiiie v crania day when they were beaten Gianavon w Ards Gfontorsn « Lhiiiau. 10&-99 by the Denver Nusgjets.

FRIENDLY: MacOesflted i Asmon utft J

818 INTERNATIONAL; England v Italy ISinlinn (7.4ft Yeo»ii m fc). cycling

Only one French team, GAN, led by Britain’s Chris Board- man. have been given auto- matic ratty into this year’s

Tour de France.

Ice Skating

Yang Yang of China set a world record in foe women’s speed skating short-track 1,500 metres yesterday, clock- ing 2mfn 28-93sec at the Asian Winter Games'in Harbin. '

Rugby League •

Kevin Tamati. who won 22 New Zealand caps and played for Widnes, has been ap- pointed coach of Chorley.

Rugby Union

TOUR NATCtti Ulster v NSW (RavanhUI). HDNBKBH HATIOMAL UAOQb First DMsIoro Nsato v Abenwon (70).

CLUB: Trod eg bi * Newbridge (AO).

wru midweek comnrnoN p.O):

Peel Ma Abercynon y PonlypooL Pool Bi NartMrm « Duwant Tenby UH * Landov- ety. Pool c: Cserghlliy • South Wales Polka; LUntiaen v Cardiff institute. Pool Di Bonyiueen v Tondw YendgynUis v Maosteg,

Rugby League

SILK CUT CHALLENGE CUP: Round fom Wteatuven v HaBto. PosQmmt Worktogton « Widnes (now tomorrow. 7.30).

ACADEMY INTERNATIONAL: Greet

Britain Aeadsnty v France (Hull KRj.

Hockey

RSTTOOfTAnVE Army * Berkshire (Aldershot).

Though Nigeria were hatdly mentioned in the three weeks of foe tournament, as 1994 champions they were sorely missed. Like Ghana, they have twice won foe world Under-17 tide and their current crop of internation- als, a mix of experienced and burgeoning young talent still look like Africa's best bet for World Cup success.

But if tiie four-year world- wide ban imposed on Nigeria for withdrawing from the African Nations’ Cup remains in force, they will not appear in France in 1998.

For foe rest of the teams, if the three weeks in South Af- rica are any indication, Haya- tou’s “matter of time”, may ! still be same time oft • Alex Ferguson, the Man- - Chester United manager, yes- terday confirmed that he wants to sign the South Af- rica central defender Mark Fish. The 30-year-old player, outstanding in the African Nations’ Cup, was ap- proached by United’s director Sir Bobby Charlton during the tournament Arsenal, Tot- tenham an several Italian clubs are also interested.

Sailing

SFA delays sign of cross punishment

THE Scottish FA made a pre-emptive strike against an injustice yesterday when it deferred a suspension on tiie Partzck Thistle striker Rod McDonald, writes Patrick Glenn.

McDonald, cautioned by foe referee Jim McGilvray at half-time in Saturday's match against Rangers for making the sign of the cross as he left the field, was given a second yellow card for a foul in the second half and was sent off

Hie was due an automatic one-match ban but the of- fences would also have taken him beyond the disciplinary- points limit and ensured a further suspension.

However, the SFA, after seeing a fax from the Thistle's chairman Jim Oliver and reports from foe referee and a linesman, put any punish- ment in abeyance until March. The first caution and the ordering-off will probably be quashed.

On foe downside, the This- tle defender Steve Pittman has been suspended for eight matches-

Pools Forecast

Round-world

housewife

Bob Fisher

AN Eastbourne syndicate led by a feisty 42-year-old housewife yesterday became the 38th entry for the Whit- bread Round the World Race of 1997-98. Sussex Challenge will be skippered by Jacky MacGillivary, whose first, mate is her husband David.

She claims to have more than half a million miles of cruising and racing to her credit but admitted that foe racing was not at the grand prix level. Importantly, though, her drive has ensured the financial support oFBUPA International, Business Against Drugs, the East- bourne College of Arts and Technology and a welter of local companies and organisa- tions. Most of foe budgetary requirement of £214 million Is in place.

Mrs MacGillivary de- scribed her husband’s job on board as “to protect foe crew , from the skipper”. Many of them have been chosen. They are mixed, amateur and, in the main, in their early : twenties. !

Their 'boat is already ear- ; marked — the Ukrainian- buzlt Hetman Sahaidachny. i which finished seventh in foe last race, taking 15 days more 1 than the winner— “unless we : have' foe money to build a new one.” the skipper said.

• The International Yacht Racing Union has confirmed that it will bold evaluation trials for a “high-performance dinghy” for’ the Olympics in 2000.

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SPORTS NEWS 15

Motor Racing

High-speed return by Hakkinen

Alan Henry

IIKA HAKKINEN picked up the threads of his career yesterday with an impressive first out- ing at the Wheel Of a Formula One car since he sustained severe head Injuries in a high-speed crash during qual- ifying for last year's Australian Grand Prix.

The 27-year-old Finn was driving last year's McLaren- Mercedes in a test which the team had planned to keep as private as possible, but he posted a fastest time within a second of the world champion Michael Schumacher's best in the Ferrari at the Paul Ricard circuit in southern France over the weekend.

“Mika's testing himself rather than the car," said a McLaren spokesman. “He has been training hard and we wanted him to have his first run since the accident with- out any pressure. ”

A week of pre-season car launches was dominated by the unveiling of Benetton's new Renault-engined B196. In contrast to Hakkinen's low- key return. Benetton's launch in the Sicilian resort of Taor-

Haklrinen . . . impressive

uuna was conducted in fee best tradition of FI high glitz.

After a spectacular start, with Jean Alesi Gerhard Berger driving two of last year's Benetton -Renaults through the main Corso Um- berto. there was an presentation of last year's Constructors* Championship trophy to Benetton by Max Mosley, president of the gov- erning body Fia.

The action then switched to the 2,000-year-old Teatro An- ti co. where Alesi. French by nationality but Sicilian by birth, unveiled the new Benetton B196 in the com- pany of celebrities including the French film star Gerard Depardieu and Italian actress Mara Venner.

Alesi and Berger both know, however, that they fhce a huge challenge in filling the void at Benetton left by Schumacher's defection to Ferrari.

The team’s teriwirai direc- tor Ross Brawn describes fee new car as “evolutionary but with significantly improved aerodynamics’* and holds out considerable optimism that the team will sustain their winning ways.

The proof of thp pudding, of course, will come during the next few weeks of testing at Estoril before the first race of the season, the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne's new Albert Park circuit on March 10.

HakkiTwn meanwhile will be moving on to Estoril for Sunday’s launch of the all- new McLaren-Mercedes MP4/11, on which David CouKhard’s hopes for 1996 will also be pinned.

The Scot, who left Williams at the end of last season, will have to wait only until the following day to see what his old team have come up with The new Williams FW18 for Damon Hill and Jacques Vilieneuve is due to break cover in the same pit lane next Monday.

Formula One glitz . . . the Sicilian resort of Taormina is the setting as Benetton unveil the new Renault-engined B196

Why British engineering is the pits’ pick

Alan Henry on a remarkable success story of high technology in the sterling area

Besides costing mil- lions and causing their creators almost as many sleepless nights, the 1996 Benetton. McLaren and Williams cars now being unveiled have one quite remarkable thing in common: they are all prod- ucts of British precision engi- neering. from drawing board to workshop floor.

Likewise, Michael Schu- macher's allegiance may have transferred from Benetton to Ferrari but the world cham- pion will continue to rely on British engineering design as he attempts a hat-trick of For- mula One titles.

Benetton and Ferrari are Italian-owned and controlled, but both teams have moved their design and research headquarters to south-eastern England to take fell advan- tage of Britain’s unique motor-racing infrastructure.

It may surprise people who have seen the nation's volume car manufacturers picked off by foreign competitors, but when it comes to racing cars the world still likes to buy British. So much so that Luca di Montezemolo, the presi- dent of Ferrari, refers to the corridor around south-west London and Surrey as “the Silicon Valley of interna- tional motor racing”.

Six of the 11 teams entered for next year's Fl world championship are based here — seven if one counts Ferrari, who build the cars they de- sign in Guildford back at com- pany headquarters in Maran- ello. So are all three world

Ice Hockey

rally championship contend- ers: Ford and Mitsubishi come over for British skills, and Subaru have their rally cars produced for them by fee Banbury engineers Pro Drive.

The wider motor-sport in- dustry — everything from components to services — is a major export earner. It em- ploys some 50,000 fell-tune staff and another 100,000 part- timers and in the financial year to last April generated profits of £750 million cm for- eign earnings of £1.3 b felon.

Britain has been Fl rac- ing’s technical home since the late Fifties, when Cooper and Lotus popularised the rear- engine chassis configuration now taken for granted.

Their success created a net- work of small and highly specialised sub-contractors who soon earned worldwide respect Since then a virtuous circle has set in. with success attracting more business and more engineering talent to produce yet more success.

From McLaren and Tyrrell near Woking to Ferrari's R & D base near Guildford and on to Williams at Grove near Didcot, Benetton at Chipping Norton, Jordan at Sllverstone and Arrows at Milton Keynes,' there is a shared commitment to excel- lence and a continuous cross- fertilisation of Ideas.

The major Fl teams operate with budgets of around £25 minion, derived from multi-

national corporate sponsors. Most of that money is direc- ted to the UK to fund techni- cal development, factory oper-

ation and personnel costs.

British expertise extends beyond Fl, however. Rey- nard. the Bicester-based Brit- ish-owned firm, builds Indy- cars . — the off-the-peg model costs $480,000 (£320,000) — and last season seized pole posi- tion in that branch of motor sport by providing the car that Jacque? Vilieneuve drove to the IndyCar title. Reynard had export turnover of £15 million last year.

Its IndyCar rivals Lola and Penske are also based here The British-owned Lola, lo- cated in John Major’s Hun- tingdon constituency, has been building Indycars for three decades. The firm has landed the contract to supply chassis for the new one-make Formula 3000 single-seater class in 1996 — £53,000 per chassis, demand expected to exceed 20 units — anri mnfrpg 95 per cent of its sales abroad.

The US-owned Penske com- pany concluded long ago that Britain was technically and economically the best place to build its cars. Its factory at Poole, Dorset opened more than 20 years ago.

IndyCar and Fl engines are supplied mainly by two rival Northampton-based compa- nies, Casworth and Umor En- gineering. The former builds grand prix engines for Ford to power the Sauber team in 1996 and Jackie Stewart's Mil- ton Keynes-based team when it starts up in 1997; the latter builds them for Mercedes- Benz to power the McLaren.

Umor and Cosworth also provide IndyCar “customer engines” off the shelf for around £1 million per year for each two-car team. Exports by both companies are valued at around £25-£30 million a year.

The Zoom Zone

How the world's top racing teams ring London

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Rinks of gold for the lawyers

Vic BateheHer

ANYONE encouraged by the game’s growth must also be concerned at its growing pains. The all-time attendance record was beaten by the 1 2.386-strong crowd at the Nynex Arena for Man- chester Storm’s 4-2 wm over Bracknell on Sunday. But in- cidents elsewhere promise to maintain the sport as a lucra- tive field for members of fee

'^STSS IU> of lego;

matters. Every day: reemsto revolve around a caU to .our solicitor now.

Hockey Association secretary David Pickles said yesterday “Five years ago I didnT even know' who he was: we just used to get a calends at Christmas. Now he is highly

involved in running the sport.”

One of the latest items on that desk is the dispute be- tween Telford Tigers and the arena management at Black- bum before Sunday night’s Division One match. Telford s Russ Plant was refused entry and prevented from playing in a came the visitors lost 9-7.

Plant a product of Telford s youth development pro- gramme, had moved to Black- bum last season but returned to the Shropshire club last week. With the sides unable to agree a foe, the BIHA was asked to arbitrate but Telford were riven permission to use him pending the outcome. Now Tigers are demanding to be awarded the points or have die game replayed at no cost

to themselves.

The next case pending con-

cerns the London-boro Cana- dian-raised Roger Hunt, who while playing for Murrayfield Racers at Bracknell on Febru- ary 22 1992 was involved In an Incident in which a home player was seriously injured.

Hunt was detained by Thames Valley Police and charged wife causing griev- ous bodily harm, but be left the country after the court hearing was twice postponed.

The BIHA's disciplinary chairman Frank Dempster was quoted at the time as say- ing -feat Hunt and the then Racers coach Leo Koopmans had been placed “under a life- time banfronj participating in British ice hockey". Yet on Saturday Hunt returned in Murrayfield Royals' 15-2 home defeat by Swindon Wildcats, with Dempster denying any knowledge of a “lifetime ban".

He claimed it was only a “period of indefinite suspen- sion'' and added that after receiving a request from Murrayfield for fee situation to be reviewed he had given permission for Hunt to return after “consulting three mem- bers of the BIHA council”.

Dempster also said he had been assured by the club that the player had not been charged. But a Thames Valley police spokeswoman said yes- terday: “We did instigate pro- ceedings at the time and the case is still not dosed.”

Fife Flyers', use of their newly signed Canadian Frank Evans in the defeats at home to Sheffield (4-3) and away at the Durham Wasps (9-6) Is also “under review”. The BIHA had ordered Fife not to play him pending receipt of his international clearance.

Basketball

Byrd continues to prey on the league that rejected his Palace

Robert Pryce

ALTON BYRD, the ur- bane host of a Radio 5 show. Crystal Palace's gen- eral manager and part owner, takes up his other role tonight: the be- soeakered avenger.

Palace, the team the Bnd- weiser League rejected last year, have already ejected two Bud League teams from the National Cup, For the first leg of the semi-final at the National Sports Centre tonight the league will be represented by its champi- ons, the Sheffield Sharks.

“This is our chance,” Byrd said yesterday, “to continue to show people that we belong in the top league." Indeed, the point has already been made. Pal-

ace field a team that in- cludes five internationals, including Byrd himself. They are unbeaten in do- mestic competition since December 10 1994.

The reservations raised by the Bud League last summer have largely been laid to rest Palace have attracted commercial and local au- thority interest, sponsor- ship and healthy enough crowds; for their 80-75 win over fee Leopards in the quarter-finals the atten- dance was just under 2,000.

Palace will apply to the Bud League again this year, but Byrd will leave the pre- sentation of their case to his fellow directors. “I couldn’t take another year,” he said, “of satisfy- ing a set of criteria that are seemingly unsatisfiable.”

Boxing

Bruno and Benn in pills probe

JackMassarik

EYES popped at the British Boxing Board of Control's offices in London yesterday when officials read press reports from Tenerife that Frank Bruno and Nigel Benn were talcing 150 vitamin pills a day.

Last night inquiries were being made in the Canaries, where Britain's two WBC champions are training at a warm -weather camp for their world-title defences next month, Bruno against Mike Tyson. Benn against Sugar Boy Malinga.

Ingestion of vitamins on this scale, as Professor Thomas Sanders, head of nutrition and diet at King’s College, London, pointed out yesterday, “could cause problems”.

John Morris, the Board's secretary, fears that the fighters are following the dictum to “keep taking the tablets” too seriously.

“I’ve spoken to Frank Warren, the promoter of Bruno and Benn. and had a chat with Frank Bruno's wife Laura, and we just want to know fee details,” be said last night.

“If you read a story that says Britain's top boxers could be putting them- selves at risk, we obviously want to know how and why.”

The Board’s chief medical officer Adrian Whiteson said: “If they’ve got a bal- anced diet — and there’s no reason to believe they haven't — their nutrition Is better than most people's. I don’t believe any vitamins they lake would have any benefit to them other than a psychological one.”

The Board was “not wielding a big stick’’, stressed Morris. “We are not going to hassle our box- ers — we are very proud of them, these are our two WBC world champions — but we want chapter and verse medically about what they are doing and how they are doing it.

“We want to be sure they are not doing anything that puts themselves at risk. Our own medical panel have initiated the inqui- ries. We obviously need to know. Some of this may be exaggerated, but once we find out the levels of vita- mins that are being taken we can get experts to assess whether they are safe.”

Rugby League

Weather threat to Cumbria ties

John Huxley

THE two outstanding Silk Cut Challenge Cup fourth-round ties are continuing to give fee Rugby Football League a problem. Both are to be played in Cum- bria. where severe weather is putting them at risk.

The Workington v Widnes match, which should have been played today, was fur- ther postponed for 24 hours after a heavy snowfall And there will be a pitch inspec- tion at the Recreation Grounds this morning to see if tonight’s Whitehaven v Halifax tie ran go ahead.

Whitehaven’s chairman Derrick Mossop said: “Unless there is a dramatic change overnight 1 cannot see the match being played. Roads into the town are blocked and we haven't been able to reach the stadium to see what con- ditions are like.”

Yesterday the RFL was con- sidering its options. The most likely outcome seems to be that in the event of further postponements the clubs will be given until Sunday to com- plete the ties, after which the League will consider taking the games to grounds that have under-soil heating.

Bill Madine, secretory of Whitehaven, said yesterday: “We would be very reluctant to give up home advantage.” Meanwhile. Warrington’s

Snooker

chairman Peter Higham has criticised Leeds and Wigan for forging links with rugby union clubs. The Cheshire club have barred their play- ers from pursuing such con- nections and have made it clear they will not allow union clubs to use their Wilderspool stadium.

Higham said: “We’ve just finished fee 106-year war and now we are bending over backwards to help rugby union. We should be concen- trating on promoting Super League and not throwing down the welcome mat to union. I can’t see the gain for league in Wigan entering the Middlesex Sevens or playing Bath in challenge matches.

“Some league people won’t be resting easy, the way we’ve gone cap in hand to union. There is a real danger of union gaining fee upper hand at league grounds they share, because of the money in their game.”

The chairman said War- rington had rejected invita- tions from Welsh rugby union clubs to play them at league.

St Helens’ 58-16 Challenge Cup fourth-round win at Castleford has cost them dear. Their loose forward Dean Busby has been ruled out for a month with a torn medial ligament in his knee. How- ever, be should be available for the semi-finals if the Merseyside club progress that far.

Some shaker from Morgan

Clive Everton

|ARREN MORGAN edged 'past Peter Ebdon 6-5 wife a respotted black yesterday to record his first victory in four visits to the Benson and Hedges Masters at the Wem- bley Conference Centre.

His victory -war-dance, ac- companied by a handshake that almost yanked his oppo- nent’s arm out of its socket, was even more extravagant than Ebdon’s last year when he beat Stephen Hendry from two down with three to play.

‘Tve always bad a go at him [Ebdon] in the past for doing that but I just couldn't help it” said Morgan. “It was very unprofessional and very immature,” said Ebdon.

Morgan, the only member of the world's top eight never to have won a major title, was taken to the sudden-death extra black when the life frame ended in a tie.

Trailing 2-t he had fought back to 5-4 before a break of 96 (12 reds, 12 blacks) brought Ebdon level at 5-5. In the de- ciding frame Morgan missed a match-ball blue he would or- dinarily pot and had to watch Ebdon clear the three remain- ing balls to tie.

Ebdon was first to attempt the tie-break black but it was the Welsh left-hander who sank it to earn a place in fee quarter-finals.

Andy Hicks, a world and UK semi-finalist last year, earlier made a striking Wembley debut He compiled breaks of 67. 102, 63, 125 and 103 in a 5-2 win over David Roe.

Hockey

Tough tie for Loughtonians

Pat Rowley

I HE strength of the tear

I left in the HA Cup w, bound to produce a tig draw, and two quart e finals that would hai made excellent final % Guildford v Reading az Old Loughtonians v Soul gate —have come out of tl hat

Loughtonians, who d fend their indoor title ; Crystal Palace on Frida; have their fourth succe sive home draw in the ou door competition, bi Southgate are the most su cessfol cup side. Current leaders of the Nationi League, they ended Long] tonians' unbeaten record i November with a 2-1 win.

Unlike Loughtoniani East Grinstead's ran t home ties has been broke] They are away to Ha van fee 1990 winners.

The other quarter-fim sees fee league champloi Teddington at home to Cai terbnry, who are in the la eight for fee first time. C the survivors, these are tl only sides never to have wo a national competition.

The teams in all fbc quarter-finals have airead met in the league this wb ter, all at the reverse vei ues. Guildford drew 2-2 t Reading, East Grlnstea beat Havant 4-1 and Cai terbnry gained their fin win over Teddington. 2-0.

(HMWi QuiMtod v Reading; Havant Eaai Grinsiaad; Old Loughlonlam Southgate. Teddington v Camertairy. f be played March 1C).

16	Tuesday February 6 1996
Christie abandons the indoor season, page 1 3	McCarthy steps into Big Jack’s shoes, page ire
Popplewell cleared to face Quins, page 1 3	Formula One parades the new cars, page 15

SportsGuardian

WORLD CUP CLOSE TO CHAOS AS ORGANISERS REFUSE TO BYPASS COLOMBO

David Hopps on fresh pressure on Sri Lanka to allow matches to be moved from the capital and the shadow of the bomber

Now West Indies want out

WEST INDIES joined forces with Australia last night in Imploring the World Cup organisers to reschedule their group match outside Sri Lanka in the wake of last week's terrorist bomb blast in Colombo.

Although West Indies did not quite follow Australia’s lead by expressly refusing to play in Sri Lanka, the tone of their statement implied that refusal was inevitable if a switch was not granted.

Pilcom, the joint hosts' or- ganising committee, had steadfastly dismissed Austra- lia's request, its secretary jagmohan Dalmiya insisting’. “Pilcom has decided that the matches in Sri Lanka will be played as scheduled."

Australia’s captain Mark Taylor, who spoke in Sydney yesterday of “a genuine con- cern of life-threatening in- jury’’. played down the risk of disqualification. Indeed that Is highly improbable, Pil- com's response suggesting only mounting confusion. “There Is nothing in the play- ing conditions about this." Dalmiya said. “It is totally unprecedented.”

The organisers will have awoken today to the further jolt of the West Indian an- nouncement. but with less than a week before Sunday's opening ceremony in Calcutta it would require formidable diplomatic efforts to persuade them to change their stance.

Whatever the merits of the argument the willingness of cricket's authorities to invest decisions of such magnitude in a 12-strong organising com- mittee, comprising represen- tatives from Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, rather than in- vest the ICC Itself with over- all powers has again been ex- posed as folly.

Peter Short, president of the West Indies Board of Con- trol released a statement say- ing: "We are greatly apprecia- tive of the security measures being taken by the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka, with the backing of the country’s president and security forces, to try to en- sure the safety of the West Indies team.

“However ... the board has reluctantly come to the con- clusion that for the players' safety and peace of mind, which is paramount it has requested Pilcom to resched- ule the Sri Lanka v West Indies match on February 25 outside Sri Lanka.

Bowler takes guard . . . the England seamer Darren Gough skips rope at practice in Lahore yesterday as Pakistan security forces look on johng&jes

"The board is aware of the tremendous dislocation that this decision will cause and consequent disappointment to the Sri Lankan people. However, this decision has been taken in the best inter- ests of West Indies and world cricket."

Though Leicestershire called off their pre-season tour to Sri Lanka yesterday after Foreign Office advice, Zimbabwe and Kenya have both indicated a qualified

willingness to play there, al- though they may reconsider after this West Indian plea.

Kenya's match is scheduled for the hill-country town of Kandy, and Jimmy Rayana, secretary of Kenya's national association, stated: "We shall play In iSri Lanka provided there is reasonable security. Kenya are playing outside Co- lombo where there has been no immediate threat yet”

Any prospect of Sri Lanka winning four of their five

group matches by virtue of forfeits, leaving them with only one outstanding group match, against India in Delhi, before their automatic quali- fication for the quarter-finals, would be an untenable posi- tion which even Pilcom could not easily ignore.

But the organisers could not agree to jettison Sri Lan- ka's matches without consid- erable repercussions, fore- most (rf which would be Sri Lanka’s likely withdrawal

from the World Cup and an immediate schism among the Test nations.

Pakistan's representatives are only too well aware that fixtures in foe strife-torn cities of Karachi and Peshawar — each hosting England matches — will take place amid foe same heavy security being of- fered by the Sri Lankans.

Meanwhile, a solution looked in sight yesterday, to the long-naming dispute be- tween India’s state-run net-

work Doordarshan and WaddTel, the American com- pany which bought the World Cup television rights.

According to reports from the High Court in New Delhi, Doordarshan has accepted a WorldTel offer under which World Cup matches played in India can be broadcast to local audiences, even though Doordarshan has not paid fur- tber funds into court as WorldTel had been demanding.

Asprilla? No certain cure for headache

Richard Williams

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Guardian top of the naps table

CHRIS HAWKINS napped Tempering (7-1) at Southwell yesterday, sending the Guardian to the top of the Sport- ing Life naps table with a profit of £25.70. Racing, page 13

I CANT say for sure whether the supporters of Newcastle United had a close shave over the non- transfer of Faustino Asprilla, as foe tabloids — with their tales of coke barons and pom queens —seem to have been suggesting. What I do know Is that I feel sorry for them, which is not the most usual reaction to a team nine points clear in the Premiership.

Their fans have a coveted manager on a 10-year contract, an enthusiastic and construc- tive chairman, a majestically rebuilt stadium and a star- studded squad of-players pro- ducing foe sort of football that reminds cynics of why they first fell In love with the game. Set all that against the appar- ent failure to secure the signa- ture of a forward who couldn't manage a goal in a crucial World Cup match against the United States 18 months ago, and you might ask exactly what there is to feel sorry for.

But foe Asprilla affair will have reinforced a lesson New- castle's supporters may have been in danger of forgetting: that life Is not competed solely of a knifelike Beardsley pass, a mazy GLoola dribble and a thunderous roar as Fer- dinand rises at foe far post The whole business of foe knee X-ray and the disagree- ment over the player's value may be a game cf bluff and counter bluff at foe end of which Kevin Keegan will be writing Asprilla 's name on a Newcastle team-sheet Some- how I doubt it ff you watched foe TV news footage of the Co- lombian's brief visit to St James' Park the other day and paid attention to the body lan- guage, you could have come to only one conclusion: that however much money he was being offered. Asprilla just didn’t fancy the idea.

supporters turned n out in foe snow to pat 1 him on foe back and get I his autograph. They be- lieved that Keegan had brought them yet another present Ever since his return, like foe children all sports fans are, they have became ad- dicted to such gifts. But this was one they didn’t even get to unwrap.

Swaddled in bis winter coat, Asprilla had the air of a man

with a plane to catch. He ac- cepted foe pats, but did not

smile. He signed the scraps of paper! but did not look the sup- plicants in the eye. Had I been a Geordie, I would not have renewed my season ticket in the expectation of see tog him in foe black and white.

Every football fen has a sim- ilar tale buried somewhere in his or her secret heart, the memory of the transfer that went wrong — the one that

didn’t go through, or that left

you spending the next 1 0 years

wishing it hadn't

A fewfeet from me in this .office are foe Spars supporter who remembers the arrival of the Fulham centre- back John

Lacey as a signal of the club’s diminished ambition, the Luton follower to whom the acquisition of Steve Will lams from Arsenal represented a symbol of deluded dreams, the Arsenal fan who uttered the rtawiB of Peter Mortoello with a sad shake of the head, and the Evertonian to whom the arrival of Gary Lineker at the expense of Andy Gray signi- fied the moment at which the coherence of a title- winning twnm began to disintegrate.

Those of us destined to fol- low the fortunes of Notting- ham Forest still think about bow the arrival of Jim Baxter, the former Scotland genius bought by the chairman with- out the manager's knowledge, helped destroy a lovely side almost 30 years ago.

Baxter scored witha stun- ning long-range volley in his first home game and then took his team mates on a tour of the city's bars lasting several months. ("Bad team," Baxter said of Forest recently. They were indeed, after he had got among them.)

JL COUPLE of years later

W\ Brian Clough an-

nounced the signing to m mDerby County— the

hated rivals — cf Forest’s sole remaining jewel foe winger Ian Storey-Moore, and pa- raded him to front of County's crowd during the half-time in- terval at the Baseball Ground. Realising what they had al- most done, the Forest commit- tee withdrew from foe deal and sold him to Manchester United instead.

When Clough walked into the City Ground a few years later and began the adventure that ended with Forest's name alongside those of Real Madrid and AC Milan on the European Cup, one or two of us had to swallow hard to forget his part in that humiliation. The short, unhappy saga of Faustino As- prilla is unlikely to leave such a scar, but it is a reminder to Newcastle that as Ron Green- wood once informed Glenn Hoddle, disappointment is part of football

If the best measure of a country’s cuisine is the standard of the lunelrto be found, ait random, in a small town in a moderately priced restaurant, then France some time ago slipped into second place in Europe.

Not only is Italy ahead but Spain and England are on the way up. Sebastian Faulks

G2 page 8

Guardian Crossword No 20,568

Set by Gordius

Across

1 Screw turning red to green (6) 4 Forgetting nothing while on errand (8)

9 Member taken round among the test (5)

10 Mischance may be applied mstiwmaficafly{9)

11 Ffam ran mean business in Ireland (9)

12 Haying caught ninety fish, do even better (5)

13 Leo's Bavarian version is equally bold (5,2,1 ,4)

17 Composed a sonnet to brag about fast food (5^5)

20 Die far a drink (5)

21 Medtapromteence far punish- ment awsnJsd by master... (?)

23 ...About whom w» infer CartBer treatment (9)

24 Saw to prior inspection (5)

25 The fringe are wail advised nottobestraghtforwardfS)

29 Unknown enemy formation may be Involved In deansing

Down

1 They should be prepared to raise current using copper to British standard (4.4)

2 People who flourish In a new — or in a caravan? (8)

3 Levant from Egypt to Israel opening new relationships (5)

5 Mad Charlie who upsets the farces of law and order. . .

(7 ®

6 ...IB® a cop — gats a

flashing ter others’ (9)

7 -^stupiefity — putting one officer Into unprofessional

work (6)

8 Child turns tip for a drink — ife refused (2.4)

10 Running buffet? (5,2,6}

14 Kohl gets a bit of a laugh in opening house endlessly (3,8)

’ f -

OROSSWOBD SOUmON 20,507

15 Principal supporter thl month with article In a month (8)

18 Instrument for the ear too refined a range (8) 18 Capital lacks one (nth south-east; they're thi the ground (6)

18 Presumably said withe

glory (EO

22 Fruit French paper Is s (5)

Solution tomorrow

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